Mixed Nuts Trivia Quiz

Answer: London

The Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, was built in 1247 as a priory. It became a hospital in 1330 and first started to admit mentally ill patients around 1407. It became notorious for the brutal treatment of patients. The public could pay a penny to come and see the violent antics of the 'lunatics'.

There was little or no attempt at treatment. The hospital is famous as the original 'Bedlam', a corruption of Bethlehem.

Answer: Lord Shaftesbury

The Asylum Act of 1808 was intended to lead to the building of asylums up and down the country, but only twenty were built in a twenty year period. Many mentally ill people were being detained in jails rather than receiving treatment. The new Act required every county and borough to provide a purpose built asylum and changed the status of mentally ill people from prisoners to patients.

Answer: Any of these

It was very common for the family of an unmarried mother to commit her to the local asylum, where she often stayed for the rest of her life. Epilepsy was also seen as a form of 'lunacy' and many epileptics ended up in asylums, as did drunkards and other people seen as wastrels by their families.

There was little or no hindrance to this. If the family doctor said that committal was needed then no second opinion was sought, and there was no time limit on the period of commital.

Answer: Frontal lobotomy

The frontal lobotomy procedure was introduced in the mid 1930s as a method of 'calming' psychiatric patients. It could have disastrous side effects leaving patients incapacitated for the rest of their lives. Despite this it remained in use for many years, and only gradually declined when anti- psychotic medication was introduced in the 1950s.

Answer: Enoch Powell

This announcement was the start of a shift from incarceration to care in the community, although it took another twenty-five years for the plans to come to fruition. Advances in psychiatric care and medication meant that most patients no longer needed twenty-four hour a day care, and often could be treated in their local general hospital or at home rather than a specialist mental hospital.

Answer: Appeal against their certification

This Act gave rights back to asylum inmates and allowed them to appeal against their certification. It was also instrumental in mentally ill people leaving the large asylums and moving out into the community into half way houses and other care in the community initiatives. This led to a further decline in the number of mental hospitals.

Answer: Commissioners in Lunacy

The Commissioners in Lunacy were responsible for overseeing plans for asylums, setting standards of care within them, and only they, or their appointed local representatives, could end a patient's incarceration within an asylum. All asylums in the country, with the sole exception of Bethlehem Hospital, had to be registered with them, have written standards laid down and have a resident physician in charge.

Whilst the regimes inaugurated under their care would seem harsh to us, they did represent a great step forward in the treatment of the mentally ill.

Answer: Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum

Public perception of Broadmoor is that it is a prison, but in fact it is not; it is a high security psychiatric hospital, and is run as a hospital not as a prison. Many of the patients there come from the Criminal Justice System as either unfit to plead or as too dangerous and deranged to go into the normal prison system. Notorious patients there have included Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) and Ronald Kray.

In 1962 a patient, John Straffen, escaped and murdered a local child. After that an alarm system was set up to alert local people should an escape occur, and this is tested every week.

Answer: Electroconvulsive Therapy

Barbaric though all of the choices sound they have all been used in the treatment of the mentally ill. The basis of convulsive therapy is that very few epileptics are schizophrenic and therefore convulsions help to treat or prevent mental illness. This is not as bizarre as it sounds as in the Middle Ages it was noted that, after recovering from cholera, patients in insane asylums improved. Electroconvulsive Therapy eventually emerged as the most effective treatment and was widely used through the 1940s and 1950s.

It is still in use, in conjunction with drug therapy, for some depressive illnesses, although it is now used only with the consent of the patient.

Answer: Ten percent

A report published by the Prison Reform Trust found that thousands of mentally ill people were ending up in prison instead of hospital. The report found delays and difficulties in transferring people with severe mental illness from prison to a mental hospital, and cited several examples of people with dementia being sent to prison instead of being referred for treatment.

The prisons found themselves unable to offer the correct treatment to mentally ill inmates, many of whom were re-offending and being sent back to prison within a short time of release due to inadequate resettlement and continuity of care facilities.