2. Patients Often Committed Suicide After Release
Unsurprisingly, given the torturous and utterly ineffective treatments practiced at the time, the lucky few patients allowed to leave an asylum were no healthier than when they entered. No actual care was given to a specific patient’s needs or issues; they were instead just forced to perform the role of a healthy person to escape the hell on earth that existed within the asylum walls. For those who were truly mentally ill before they entered, this was a recipe for disaster. Many depressed and otherwise ill patients ended up committing suicide after escaping the asylums. Doubtless, the horrors they witnessed and endured inside the asylums only made their conditions worse.
Thanks to actual psychiatric science, we now know that the time immediately after discharge from an inpatient facility is the most dangerous time for many patients. Suicide risk is unusually high when patients are out of a controlled setting and reintegrate into the outside world abruptly. One study found that women were 246 times more likely to die within the first week of discharge from a psychiatric institution, with men being 102 times more likely. Given the ignorance of this fact in 1900 and the deplorable treatment they received, one wonders how many poor souls took their lives after leaving asylums.