Lunatic asylum

The lunatic asylum, insane asylum or mental asylum was an institution where people with mental illness were confined. It was an early precursor of the modern psychiatric hospital. Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from and eventually replaced the older lunatic asylum. The treatment of inmates in early lunatic asylums was sometimes brutal and focused on containment and restraint. The discovery of anti-psychotic drugs and mood-stabilizing drugs resulted in a shift in focus from containment in lunatic asylums to treatment in psychiatric hospitals. Later, there was further and more thorough critique in the form of the deinstitutionalization movement which focuses on treatment at home or in less isolated institutions. Whilst it was used in the past, modern and more humane areas have been developed as opposed to the methods of isolation and questionable therapies used in lunatic (insane) asylums.