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BBC Four

BBC 4

Adam Jessel

Chris Boulding

Mental: A History of the Madhouse

Documentaries

Factual: Health & Wellbeing

Factual: History

17/05/2010

BBC Four - Mental: A History of the Madhouse

Documentary telling the story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums.

Documentary telling the story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums and what it says about society's changing attitudes to mental illness in the last 60 years.

Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years.

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