Bedlam House: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Batman-Arkham-Asylum-Impressions-1.jpg|link=Batman: Arkham Asylum|thumb|400px|Makes you long for the good old days of [[Hollywood Exorcism|exorcisms]], doesn't it?]]
{{quote|''"You must admit, it's hard to imagine this place being conducive to ''anyone's'' mental health."''
|'''[[Batman]]''', on Arkham Asylum}}
Oh no... your character has gone crazy. Stark raving mad. Surely what they need is a [[Hospital Paradiso|modern facility]] with friendly doctors, like the one [[Britney Spears]] used to check into on a regular basis.
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Has nothing to do with [[Coraline (novel)|the Beldam]].
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== Comic Books ==
* [[Batman]]'s Arkham Asylum. Whenever shown it is a dark, dank, brickwalled facility, run by burly nurses and [[Mad Doctor|mad doctors]]. Probably because whoever's funding the place is more concerned with keeping the inmates ''in'' than making them ''sane''. [[Cardboard Prison|Not that that works, either]].
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== Tabletop Games ==
*
** The Asylum for the Mentally Disturbed on the island of Dominia, run by [[Psycho Psychologist| Daclaud Heinfroth (aka Dr. Dominiani)]], the Darklord. He claims to be an "alienist", a psychologist specializing in the study of madness, and claims that the only way one can find a cure for insanity is through experimentation and observation. What this means is, in order for him to learn, he has to purposely make victims insane in order to study them, which tends to happen to anyone unlucky enough to wind up in Dominia. He and his staff, by the way, are vampires, specifically cerebral vampires, a rare variant who feed on a victim's cerebrospinal fluid rather than blood.
** Dr. Illhousen, narrator of in-character material from the ''Nightmare Lands'' boxed set, tries hard to subvert this trope by introducing some actual theraputic care {{spoiler|and defenses against the nightmare-inducing entities that plague its patients}} to a Bedlam House.
* As in Lovecraft's original source material, some pretty dodgy stuff is liable to go on in ''[[Call of Cthulhu (tabletop game)]]'''s insane asylums.
* In the horror RPG ''[[Kult]]'', most asylums are hellholes and torture chambers where people only grow more insane. This includes the doctors. {{spoiler|In fact, such asylums tend to work as holes in the [[Weirdness Censor|illusion]] that humanity inhabits; portals to Inferno and other nasty parts of the dark Reality surrounding us.}}
* ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' sourcebook ''Asylum'' describes one of these in detail. The sample asylum has many, ''many'' reasons to be weird by nature (ranging from its proximity to ancient mounds to the religious cult that sprung up on the grounds to the occasional patient riot), and each patient profiled for plot hooks has a [[Multiple Choice Past]] with options ranging from "just plain normal mental illness" to "some really weird shit."
* ''[[Planescape]]'' has the Gatehouse, an asylum run by the [[Determined Defeatist| Bleak Cabal]], who also use it as their headquarters; doesn't alway fit the trope, but it does sometimes, depends on who is running the faction.
** In the adventure module ''Harbinger House'', the eponymous institution was not intended as such, it is a safe and humane asylum run by the Believers of the Source (aka the Godsmen), with rather exclusive requirements for patients. They are all believed to show potential for ascending to godhood. (The Godsmen believe ''everyone'' has this potential, the asylum here being for mentally ill Cagers who show it the most.) Of course, the plot of the story involves it becoming such {{spoiler| due to a new physician who is secretly be a succubus.}}
== Theater ==
* In ''[[Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (theatre)|Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street]]'', Fogg's Asylum is one of these. Among other things, insane asylums like this back in the day let wigmakers come in and clip the hair of its inmates for their wigs. {{spoiler|Sweeney and Anthony use this as a way for Anthony to get into the madhouse to rescue Johanna.}}
* The setting of ''[[Marat
* In the play ''The Insanity of Mary Girard,'' Mary Girard, a sane woman, has been confined to one of these by her husband because she is pregnant by another man's child, and this infidelity is treated as a disease. There's even a device called the Chair, where they strap unruly inmates down, hands and feet, and put a black box over their heads so they can't even see. In the end, {{spoiler|she decides that it's better to live away from her husband and the world outside, even if she does have to be trapped, because if she is obedient she will be treated reasonably well. However, when the tourists come and pay to gawk at the inmates, she will flaunt once and for all that she is [[Madness Mantra|insane... insane... insane...]].}} [[Nightmare Fuel]]? Why, most certainly!
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{{quote|'''Doc Brown''' "They'd ship us both off to the loony bin! And trust me, you don't want to see the inside of a 1930's insane asylum!"}}
* ''[[MediEvil (1998 video game)|Medievil]]'' has The Asylum, which is filled with cackling madmen in strait-jackets who want to headbutt you to death.
* Subverted in ''[[Darkest Dungeon]]'' with the Sanitorium. While it has the feel of this Trope initially, sending a hero there for treatment can cure them of Disease, remove a negative Quirk, or "lock" a positive Quirk. It costs money, of course.
== Web Comics ==
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== Real Life ==
* Regrettably, this sort of environment isn't as extinct even in modern times as we'd like to believe. If you're ready to have your heart broken, check out [http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/30/torture-school-subje.html the Judge Rotenberg Center.] Electric shocks for offenses such as swearing, ceasing an assigned task for more than ten seconds, or "nagging," is only the tip of [http://boston.com/news/daily/15/school_report.pdf the iceberg.] Unfortunately, the JRC is not a [https://web.archive.org/web/20101225200200/http://ballastexistenz.autistics.org/?p=97 one-of-a-kind anomaly.]
** The place, by the way, is named after the judge who allowed them to keep running after "casually" receiving a generous payment from them.
* Conversely, [[Church of Happyology|Scientologists]] believe that ''every'' mental hospital on the planet, without exception, is like this. Their front group, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, is dedicated to "educating" the public about this fact. (And the fact that psychiatrists caused 9/11 and the Holocaust.) Their solution to this is to close them all down and [[Assimilation Plot|replace the entire mental health industry]] with the wonders of [[L. Ron Hubbard]]'s "tech". Horrible as some mental hospitals can be, this is no reason to tear down all therapy everywhere, which is what Scientologists aspire to do.
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