THE TRUE MADHOUSE DAYS Having lived through the true Madhouse days, I can tell you an amzing story not recorded elsewhere. It is about the snake-pit era of the 1950s when our state hospitals like Manteno were reaching their peak populations. At the time our society swept the mentally ill into institutions thought of as benign and benevolent. But in fact they were not so kind and benevolent. Very few people knew about it at the time. But I knew, because I was there. As an idealistic medical student, intent on helping patients with serious mental illness, I went to live at Manteno for three...

Within our lifetimes we have made amazing advances in the treatment of the mentally ill. In the United States more than 800,000 patients have been freed from the warehouses of state mental hospitals, many dramatically awakened from the nightmare of psychotic illness. The successful treatment for the vast majority of those with serious mental illness has become the new norm. With the appropriate use of new psychiatric drugs plus improved psychotherapeutic techniques, we have seen nearly magical improvement, even in those thought to be untreatable. Apart from those whose hallucinations,...