asylums
Refuges for persecuted
Asylums are institutions offering refuge or protection.
Historically, an asylum was a place where those seeking sanctuary could not be seized—a concept surviving in political asylum, protection granted to refugees from persecution.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries, asylum became synonymous with institutions for the mentally ill: the state asylum, locked away in an asylum.
That usage now sounds dated and carries connotations of grim, warehouse-like facilities.
Modern terminology favors psychiatric hospital or mental health facility.
Protected sacred space
- shelterProtected place or structure
- havenShelter from danger
- protectionGuarding against harm
- safetyFreedom from harm
escape · harbor · retreat · refuge · persecution · displaced · exile · immigration
Psychiatric inpatient facility
- institutionEstablished organization or custom
- sanatoriumFacility for prolonged recovery
- madhouseChaotic, disordered place
- patientsThose receiving medical treatment
commitment · psychiatric ward · lunatic · treatment · electroshock · restraints · orderlies · inmates
Shelter for the destitute
- almshouseCharitable home for poor
- workhouseInstitution housing poor laborers
- orphanageInstitution housing parentless children
- VictorianOf a prim era
reformatory · industrial school · inmates · superintendent · wards · benefactors · philanthropy · overcrowding
sanctuary
Protected sacred space
- shelterProtected place or structure
- havenShelter from danger
- protectionGuarding against harm
safety · escape · harbor · retreat · refuge · persecution · displaced · exile · immigration · border
mental hospital
Psychiatric inpatient facility
- institutionEstablished organization or custom
- sanatoriumFacility for prolonged recovery
- madhouseChaotic, disordered place
patients · commitment · psychiatric ward · lunatic · treatment · electroshock · restraints · orderlies · inmates · lobotomy
poorhouse
Shelter for the destitute
- almshouseCharitable home for poor
- workhouseInstitution housing poor laborers
- orphanageInstitution housing parentless children
Victorian · reformatory · industrial school · inmates · superintendent · wards · benefactors · philanthropy · overcrowding · conditions
- Victorianaseances, Dickens, spiritualism, Sherlock Holmes, phrenology
- Psychology HistoryFreud, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Jung, William James
- madnessmadness, lunacy, insanity, mania, schizophrenia
- medical historyHippocrates, germ theory, bloodletting, Galen, four humors
- US Medical Historypolio vaccine, Jonas Salk, Salk vaccine, Clara Barton, Walter Reed
- Victorian ArchitectureVictorian architecture, Victorian, Victorian style, Queen Anne, Italianate
asylumsdangers
Sources of potential harm
war zones · perils · killing fields · battlefields · danger zones
asylumsprisons
Detention facilities for criminals
jails · penitentiaries · dungeons · detention centers · internment camps
asylumsexile
Banishment from homeland
banishment · expulsion · deportation · ostracism · rejection
- insane asylumFacility for mentally ill
- asylum seekerOne requesting official protection
- political asylumGovernment-granted refugee protection
- mental asylumsFacilities for psychiatric patients
- lunatic asylumOutdated mental hospital
- seeking asylum