Who Profits from the Psychiatric Hospital?
Being committed to psychiatric hospitals has been practiced for several centuries. During the 1500s one of the original and best known psychiatric hospitals was created. It was located in London and called St. Mary of Bethlehem. The locals referred to it as “bedlam” and this is where the original definition of that term came from. This was considered a time of enlightenment because the school of thought concerning deviant behavior was shifting away from the belief that the patient was possessed by demons or that he or she was a heretic. No more witches, in that day and age the insane were considered mentally ill and instead of being burned at the stake they were taken to a dark, dingy and cold cell where they lived out the remainder of their lives under abominable conditions. Fortunately for the mentally ill, the conditions have improved even more since the 1500s. Nowadays instead of using a straight jacket to restrain the patient, we use mind altering (psychotropic) drugs. Restraints,
