The closing of American insane asylums in the 1960’s is due to several reasons. The first is that the conditions in the hospitals were considered inhumane and cruel. The second motivation was money. In an attempt to save money, the government shut down state run asylums. The final reason is that people hoped that new psychiatric medication would cure people of their mental illnesses.
Before the creation of insane asylums, the mentally ill would stay with their families and get treatment at home. However, some were thought to be too violent to be kept at home and were sent to private hospitals.
This changed when different ideas of how to care for and treat the mentally ill were brought over from Europe. With that came the idea of “moral treatment”. Moral treatment promised that the mentally ill could be cured by being treated kindly and in ways that appealed to the rational side of their brain. Private hospitals tried to implement parts of moral treatment into their wards but could not compete with the private asylums that were being built that could give full moral treatment, 24/7.
Overtime the asylums became overcrowded and under founded. Even though these asylums were founded with the best intentions, abuse of patients and inhumane conditions arose with the lack of funding and care. In the 1950’s a new system of nursing homes, the emergence of chlorpromazine, which is a psychoactive drug that was hoped to cure even the most severe of mental illnesses, outpatient care, and deinstitutionalization, signaled the end of insane asylums.