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( Psychiatric hospital)
A psychiatric hospital is a hospital specializing in the treatment of serious mental illness, usually for relatively long-term inpatients. Two rules usually govern whether someone should be placed in a psychiatric hospital if someone is an immediate threat to harm themselves, or to harm other people. If neither of these two criteria are met, then the patient may benefit from outpatient care. If there is uncertainty as to the extent of a patient's danger to themselves or others, they are typically placed in a hospital for safety reasons. As the number of people living in cities increased, there became an increasingly large population of mentally ill people. Generally speaking, in rural areas the mentally ill had been able to rely on local support of the people around them, or managed to simply go unnoticed amongst the rest of the population. However, under the demands of larger cities they faced a higher degree of difficulty and had a much greater chance of causing disruption or simply being a nuisance. This led to the building of the early asylums.[citation needed] In the United Kingdom the Middlesex County Court Judges pressured the UK Government resulting in an Act of Parliament - The Madhouse Act 1828, allowing the building of purpose-built asylums, the first of which the 1st Middlesex County Asylum was at Hanwell in West London and opened its doors in late 1831. (Src. Museums of Madness, Andrew T. Scull, Penguin 1979)
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Psychiatric hospital Subcategories
Psychiatric hospital Articles
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