insanity and the insane

insanity and the insane. Until the 19th century, most Irish people regarded as insane were looked after by their families or wandered the countryside as beggars. Some found their way into the houses of correction, opened from 1634, into the country infirmaries, opened from 1765, and into the houses of industry, opened from 1772. The accumulation of the mad in institutions not specifically intended for their care fuelled a demand in the late 18th century for specialist hospitals.

In 1757 St Patrick's hospital, Dublin, the first such hospital in Ireland, was opened with money left by Jonathan Swift. But fears that lunacy was increasing led the government after 1800 to embark on a major asylum‐building programme, unprecedented in the United Kingdom. The Richmond asylum was opened in Dublin in 1814 and 22 district asylums were build throughout the country between 1824 and 1869.

By 1870 Irish asylums had 7,500 beds and by 1914 over 21,000. This increase in patients was partly due to a dramatic decline in the number of discharges in the latter half of the 19th century. By 1911 nearly as many people were dying in the Irish asylums each year as were being discharged.

Despite a critical report in 1925, little was done in independent Ireland until the Mental Treatment Act of 1945, which made admission a medical, not a legal, procedure and introduced the concept of voluntary admission. Within a short time the vast majority of admissions were voluntary. The Northern Irish laws had been overhauled in 1932 along similar lines. Another act in the Republic in 1981 further reformed the system. At the same time the numbers of psychiatric in‐patients fell dramatically, from a peak of 21,000 in the late 1950s to around 12,000 by the early 1980s.

The Irish government is in the process of closing all the older mental hospitals and plans to cater for the mentally ill in the future through a network of psychiatric units in general hospitals, out‐patient clinics, day centres, and hostels.

Bibliography

Finnane, M. , Insanity and the Insane in Pre‐famine Ireland (1981)
Malcolm, E. L. , Swift's Hospital: A History of St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin, 1746–1989 (1989)
Robins, J. , Fools and Mad: A History of the Insane in Ireland (1986)

Elizabeth Malcolm