Open Doors

Motts, I was wondering if you preferred the American asylums and abandoned buildings to the European asylums and abandoned buildings?
Though the exterior of the Brit buildings are much more superior in architecture, it seems the interior of the American buildings have much more equipment and their original interiors. The interior of the American ones seem more desolate because there's so much stuff left over.

most british hospitals are well cleared out. much of the equipment can be reused and money in the NHS is very tight. what can often be found when exploring british hospitals are personal things from staff and patients. there is much patient artwork in cane hill hospital ,and patient records were left at severalls ,also clothing and photographs are left in many asylums. it's rather sad that stuff like the artwork ,which a tortured patient has put much effort into is just left lying on the floor uncared for.

Hi Motts,
Were these patient rooms or seclusion rooms? What are the holes in the doors?

abandon all hope all ye who enter here

This picture and the last one (with the bullet hole in the glass) have a very cold, utilitarian, and 'industrial building' feel to it.

Even in various stages of deteriation, most asylums look like what they are, hospitals.

This one (especially this particular area) just doesn't look like a hospital environement. *shudders*

In fact, this shot looks like it's taken in a prison block.

I love the way I can "feel the environement" in your work, Motts, you are extremely talented!

It seems that American asylums suffer more vandalism and graffiti

Yukky yukky yukky. It does look like a forensic wing. How draconian. Danvers rules, anyway.

Imagine there are patients in these rooms and you are on duty at night. You're tip-toeing along, in the dark, alone with your flashlight, checking the windows. So far, everyone is sound asleep in their bed.

Then you come to the last room. You shine the flashlight in. the bed is EMPTY!! You press your nose up to the glass peering into the room, then....................AAAAARGH, the patient suddenly springs up from below the window and mashes her face into the glass only inches from yours. Her maniacal laughter tears the silence apart..................wouldn't you just s**t yourself stupid.

I'm thinking they ran out of spray paint so used their sledgehammer instead.

Debi G from Oz, why yes I do believe I would s**t myself stupid. But , thanks to you, all I have to do is clean coffee of my keyboard and screen. 8'-()

spooky spooky spooky o spooky a spooky song.

I think this may be the blind unit where patients did have their own rooms

Holes on doors?

American or English, they are both steril and void of any emotion in most sanitariums. This is an oubliette with doors.

anyone noticed the holes in every door ?

it just goes to show how tight and "YUCKED" up our government is, this country stinks at the moment!!!!!!!!! strip everything and reuse it!!! and they wonder where the super bugs come from?

My gran once had to go with a neighbour to
this place to visit someone in whittingham Hospital.She always remembered patients in the grounds walking about when they arrived and one followed her telling her to mind the holes in the ground but there was no holes visible.She told us what a frightening place it was and could not wait to get out.Wonder what they did with all the people who lived in the place when it closed.?

high dependecy unit cells realy scary

my nana used to work here when it was actually an asylum

Graham:

These places were created before the advent of many of our modern medicines. Once we started finding drugs that could fix the chemical imbalances- not to mention huge steps forward in psychiatrics, massive facilities like this were no longer needed.

It's very possible that the people that were here may be productive people in our communities. Of course- some can never be worked back into society, and were probably moved elsewhere, to other facilities.

joolz.uk: funny, around HERE everyone says, "omg, how could they leave all this stuff sitting there decaying??"

Graham, it's the result of deinstitutionalization, a well-meaning but ultimately ineffective policy begun in the 1960s (though it really kicked into high gear in the 1980s) aimed at alleviating overcrowding and eliminating the need for long-term hospital stays. The ostensible goal was to transfer the care of the chronically mentally ill to communities, allowing people to live their lives outside the confines of an institution, but the net result was a huge increase in the homeless and prison populations because most communities lacked the resources (or the compassion) to adequately care for these people. The only real beneficiary of this policy was the state, which was no long obligated to provide funding for the treatment of the mentally ill. It happened in both the USA and the UK and it's a terrible shame. Many of the people had been in hospitals their entire lives and were completely unable to cope with life on the outside. Phil Collins's song "Take Me Home" is about this very subject.