Looks to have quite a history to it.

It does, both bad and good

Actually, it was inspired by Danvers State Hospital, but I guess there are similarities to Delaware State

Good painting you have here, I still laugh at the fact that people say those fictional horror movies of an asylum with monsters etc in them are scary, I always tell them what really went on these was far scarier than anything in fiction. It's a shame too, when most of them opened they were there for a good cause, to help people with the mental disabilities and not torture their patients. Most made their own "little worlds". What I mean is they had their own gardens, power plants and other facilities that were even operated by some of the more stable patients. Then with the ones that were a living hell to be in also had patients that were not even mentally ill, a lot of them were also family members that were no longer wanted or had a normal curable disease. I don't know why we focus so little on them, I have a bad feeling that the past might repeat itself in this case as it had done with other things that people failed to learn from.

Yeah, what started out as a noble idea in many cases turned to hell on earth. Ironically, after huge reforms in the 1960's and 70's really improved these places that work was all undone in the early 1990's with de-institutionalization. The idea was to build community based group homes and move patients out of huge isolated asylums, yet another noble idea that fell short. Most of the group homes were never built, the homeless rate skyrocketed, and many mentally ill are now stuck in America's prison system.
I do wish they still had farms and gardens like in the old days. I feel like doing a job helped build self-confidence as well as help with the healing process. Exercise has been one of the best remedies for my depression and anxiety. But if you go to one now everyone is just sitting around in the day room strung out on medication.

And that's not to comment on the deplorable state of Americas mental health network. My coworker has schizophrenia, and let me tell you it got bad before he finally ended up being sent to a local psychiatric center. He threw his cell phone away, and started claiming the gov was spying on him. He's on meds now and back at work and stable, but only really got help when his obvious condition became severe. And then there's my own experience with the lack of help, waiting in a hospital emergency room for five hours just to have a nurse give me one xanex that didn't even work.

So whereas in the old days you had overcrowding and imprisonment of otherwise healthy people, the problem is now reversed. Its hard to really find good care, and you have to be on the verge of hurting yourself or others to get it.

Also, probably because of the fact that they don't truly want "to cure" any of the patients, not just in asylums, but also in other parts of the field of medicine. I once read a meme that is say, "Pharmaceutical companies say, "A patient cured, is a customer lost." and sadly it is quite true in this world anymore. I don't understand why so many things that have been proven to be good in many countries in Europe have still not even been approved here. Like the pillcam for example, it makes getting a colonoscopy much cheaper and much easier. Basically it costs $300 per pillcam, and it does not require any medications or surgery, other than a cleansing of the tract perhaps.

We have a similar problem here, also most of the mentally ill patients that are unstable then just get released again. There was this woman down the street from me, now she was once normal per se but she had a stroke in the late 1990s/early 2000s and has been ill ever since. She would harass a young boy down the street, yell at people for nothing, and let her dog run free for no reason. She once tapped on all the doors on the street with a hammer at 10:00 at night. Recently she had pointed a gun at people's houses, didn't fire but still not something to do. I think she may be somewhere permanent now or something, I don't know yet.

Yeah, part of the reason weed was banned for so long is that literally anyone could grow this plant which was useful for a variety of things. And God forbid the pharma industry has to compete selling their opioid pain meds. And on psych hospitals there are three local ones, and I believe only one is publicly run. The other two are private and only use meds. No therapy. Meanwhile the public centers in the state have had shrinking funding for years.

Yeah, a lot of local homeless people are mentally ill as well as being drug addicted