Asylum ~ Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals
Published in Documentary Blog
Skip to 1:03 for talk (Toured 70 Hospitals in 30 States)
For more than half the nation's history, vast mental hospitals were a prominent feature of the American landscape. From the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth, over 250 institutions for the insane were built throughout the United States; by 1948, they housed more than a half million patients.