Abandoned Asylums takes readers on an unrestricted visual journey inside America's abandoned state hospitals, asylums, and psychiatric facilities, the institutions where countless stories and personal dramas played out behind locked doors and out of public sight. The images captured by photographer Matt Van der Velde are powerful, haunting and emotive. A sad and tragic reality that these once glorious historical institutions now sit vacant and forgotten as their futures are uncertain and threatened with the wrecking ball. Explore a private mental hospital that treated Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities seeking safe haven. Or look inside the seclusion cells at an asylum that once incarcerated the now-infamous Charles Manson. Or see the autopsy theater at a Government Hospital for the Insane that was the scene for some of America's very first lobotomy procedures. With a foreward by renowned expert Carla Yanni examining their evolution and subsequent fall from grace, accompanying writings by Matt Van der Velde detailing their respective histories, Abandoned Asylums will shine some light on the glorious, and sometimes infamous institutions that have for so long been shrouded in darkness.

This collection of photographs, history, and firsthand accounts gives readers a glimpse at the roots of mental health. These vignettes are born of the personal stories of those who worked at these facilities, those who were institutionalized, and their families. The authors took the time to listen to their stories and endeavored to understand their past and recognize how these events continue to influence the mental health industry today. Pictured throughout are the physical relics of the places--the now largely abandoned asylums of Connecticut--where these stories unfurled.

Discusses tales of the mistreatment that took place in eleven asylums and unexplainable phenomena that occurred in some of them.

This collection of photographs, history, and firsthand accounts gives readers a glimpse at the roots of mental health. These vignettes are born of the personal stories of those who worked at these facilities, those who were institutionalized, and their families. The authors took the time to listen to their stories and endeavored to understand their past and recognize how these events continue to influence the mental health industry today. Pictured throughout are the physical relics of the places—the now largely abandoned asylums of Connecticut—where these stories unfurled.

This collection of photographs, history, and firsthand accounts gives readers a glimpse at the roots of mental health. These vignettes are born of the personal stories of those who worked at these facilities, those who were institutionalized, and their families. The authors took the time to listen to their stories and endeavored to understand their pasts and recognize how these events continue to influence the mental health industry today. Pictured throughout are the physical relics of the places—the now largely abandoned asylums—where these stories unfurled.

"Abandoned asylums are undeniably captivating things. These were once proud places of great beauty, founded of noble intent and crafted with the utmost passion, left to wither away, succumbing to time and reclaimed by nature. Literal cities sprawled upon hundreds of acres, formed around the care of the mentally and physically in-need, now forsaken and left to rot. Though disused, they are not without purpose. Within these crumbling walls and darkened wards, we may yet glean some truths, not only of what life was in an era long past, but a better understanding of our own place and time. At times it is within darkness which we may see most clearly."--Provided by publisher.

Powerful photographs of the grand exteriors and crumbling interiors of America's abandoned state mental hospitals. 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. The blueprint for these hospitals was set by Pennsylvania hospital superintendant Thomas Story Kirkbride: a central administration building flanked symmetrically by pavilions and surrounded by lavish grounds with pastoral vistas. Kirkbride and others believed that well-designed buildings and grounds, a peaceful environment, a regimen of fresh air, and places for work, exercise, and cultural activities would heal mental illness. But in the second half of the twentieth century, after the introduction of psychotropic drugs and policy shifts toward community-based care, patient populations declined dramatically, leaving many of these beautiful, massive buildings—and the patients who lived in them—neglected and abandoned. Architect and photographer Christopher Payne spent six years documenting the decay of state mental hospitals like these, visiting seventy institutions in thirty states. Through his lens we see splendid, palatial exteriors (some designed by such prominent architects as H. H. Richardson and Samuel Sloan) and crumbling interiors—chairs stacked against walls with peeling paint in a grand hallway; brightly colored toothbrushes still hanging on a rack; stacks of suitcases, never packed for the trip home. Accompanying Payne's striking and powerful photographs is an essay by Oliver Sacks (who described his own experience working at a state mental hospital in his book Awakenings). Sacks pays tribute to Payne's photographs and to the lives once lived in these places, “where one could be both mad and safe.”