Psychiatric hospital

A psychiatric hospital (also called a mental hospital, mental ward, asylum, and occasionally insane asylum , funny farm) is a hospital specialising in the treatment of persons with mental illness. Psychiatric wards differ only in that they are a unit of a larger hospital.

Mental hospitals in the media

Mental hospitals are often depicted as frightening places in fiction, where treatments are forced upon inmates by uncaring staff, or inmates themselves are either violently deranged or sinister. Although there have been cases of abuse of patients in real life, and some conditions do occasionally result in violent behaviour, this stereotype of mental hospitals is grossly misleading.

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Some recent depictions of mental hospitals in the media include:

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• K-Pax, a film starring Kevin Spacey as an institutionalised man who claims to be a space alien.
• Arkham Asylum, in the Batman mythos. In the films, the asylum was seen briefly in Batman Forever and then in Batman and Robin, but had a more vital role in Batman Begins.
• Girl, Interrupted, a film based on a book written by a former patient of McLean Hospital.
• Gothika, a film in which Halle Berry plays a psychiatrist who ends up institutionalised in the very hospital she used to work at.
• In Halloween, after having murdered his sister, a young Michael Myers is placed in Smith's Grove Sanitarium until he escapes 15 years later.
• House on Haunted Hill (1999 remake movie), set in The Vannacutt Psychiatric Institute for the Criminally Insane, a fictional institute reknown for its mass-murdererings of patients in Los Angeles, CA.
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a film based on a book by Ken Kesey about power and identity, set in a brutally-run mental institution.
• Patch Adams, a film starring Robin Williams as "Patch" Adams, a man who checks himself into a mental hospital but eventually leaves when he discovers what he needs isn't there.
• Session 9, a film shot in Danvers State Hospital in which a cleaning crew wins a bidding contract to clean up an abandoned large mental hospital within a week. One of the cleaners discovers old tapes of disturbing therapy sessions and develops schizophrenia under the stress of the tight schedule.
• Sharon's Secret, a film about an institutional psychiatrist investigating a 16-year-old girl suspected of murdering her parents.
• ', an action film in which Linda Hamilton plays a heroine committed for her (apparently) delusory belief that the end of the world is about to be brought about by a killer artificial intelligence.
• In The Silence of the Lambs, Dr Hannibal Lecter is held at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
• Twelve Monkeys, a science fiction film in which a man claiming to be from a post-apocalyptic future (played by Bruce Willis) understandably ends up being committed.
• ', a horror flick in which Emily Perkins plays a young werewolf who is committed to mental institution after overdosing on an anti-lycantropic serum intended to cure her.
• The Princess and the Warrior, a German film revolving around the antics of a nurse (played by Franka Potente) at a mental hospital and her patients.
• Awakenings, a 1990 fact-based film which tells the story of a doctor (played by Robin Williams) who in 1969 discovers beneficial effects of the then-new drug L-Dopa on patients who are comatose after surviving the 1917-1928 epidemic of encephalitis lethargica.
• King of Hearts (1966 film) (original French title: Le Roi de Coeur), a French film about a town in France that has been evacuated due to a bomb placed by the German army. The town's insane asylum is accidentally unlocked as the Germans are leaving and the inmates take over the town.
• The Simpsons television series features Calmwood Mental Hospital is several episodes, most notably "Hurricane Neddy", in which Ned Flanders—whose home had been destroyed in a hurricane—checks in after thinking he's lost his mind.
• Psychonauts Pointy Towers Home for the Disturbed is the laboratory of the evil Dr. Loboto. Raz infiltrates the decrepit mental hospital (at night, mind you) to rescue his girlfriend Lilli from the Doctor's clutches.