Health Information

Mental hospital is a hospital that specializes in the treatment of serious mental disorders. Mental hospitals vary widely in purpose and method. Some hospitals may specialize only in the short term or outpatient therapy for patients with low risk. Others may specialize in temporary or permanent care of the residents as a result of psychological disorders, require regular assistance, or special treatment and a controlled environment.

Patients are sometimes treated as voluntary, but it will be practiced when an individual can cause significant danger to themselves or others.

Usually the patient sedated, and given the daily activities such as sports, reading and recreation. In the past patients who behave in danger are often given treatment with high voltage electricity. It is now considered to violate human rights.

Some critics, such as psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz, objected to calling mental hospitals “hospitals”.

French historian Michel Foucault is widely known for his comprehensive critique of use and abuse of the asylum system in his book Madness and Civilization.

Erving Goffman coined the term ‘Total Institution’ for the places that took over and limited one’s lifetime. Anti-psychiatry movement came to the fore in the 1960s against a lot of practice, condition, or the existence of a mental hospital. Consumer Movement frequent objection or campaigned against conditions in mental hospitals or their use, voluntarily or involuntarily. Some anti-psychiatry activists have advocated for the abolition of long-term hospital for the criminally insane, including the grounds that they were judged not guilty by reason of insanity should not then be forever limited to the potential effects of legal rights, or on the opposite reason that the madness is the concept that should not be the basis for differential treatment.