Were autistics placed in sanitariums or asylums in the past?

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I was just listening to the classic Metallica track "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)", and that got me thinking; were autistics placed in insane asylums in the old days, before autism started being better understood? I remember years ago my dad said something along those lines, and he took a bit of neuropsychology when he was in university (or was it neuropsychiatry? I always get psychology and psychiatry mixed up), so he would have some background knowledge on it.

Well the first person to have been diagnosed on the spectrum was Donald Gray Triplett. He wasn't put into a mental hospital but instead it was a sanitarium for tuberculosis IIRC. As far as those on the spectrum prior to the diagnosis and knowledge of AS came about I have no idea. I would think they probably did. I do remember from the article I read about Triplett that they put him in the sanitarium as opposed to a mental institution because the mental institutions didn't have facilities for children. My memory could be faulty perhaps but makes sense. The mental institutions of old were mostly horrible places and the last place you would want a child to be put into.

Children were put into mental hospitals. There were mental hospitals full of children. I saw a doc about one such mental hospital in Staten Island, NY that's been closed for awhile now. Can't remember the name. I saw it on netflix. The black & white photos were horrific. There were all kinds handicapped children, filthy, half-dressed, sitting on floors, rocking back & forth. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the were severely autistic. The staff didn't take good care of them. Some were badly abused and their dead bodies were buried in the woods surrounding the hospital.

I'd imagine some parents institutionalized their handicapped children if they could no longer care for them or didn't want to.

Anyone but the high functioning, yes (also the high functioning with marked behavioral problems would be sent there). Which is probably a good 1/2 of the spectrum.

(I wouldn't have been.)

Many of us who survived childhood without learning about autism got into difficulties during the transition to adulthood. Mental hospitals are where you put people who can't cope.

I often wonder how I would have fared if I were born 10 or 20 years sooner. I probably would've been (wrongly) labelled mentally handicapped due to my speech delay, though not enough so that I would have been thrown in an institution.

An aunt of mine never learned to speak, and she was "sent to live with the nuns" which means a church run Institution. She sounds Autistic from all accounts, and didn't live to an old age.

lots of autistics,more specificaly those of us with LFA were sent to asylums in the years gone by because autism was originaly believed to be a form of pyschosis.

am a ex resident of a now thankfuly closed UK intelectual disability institution which was no way near as bad as the very old institutions but still a obvious throwback to those years.

had suffered a lot of abuse every day there [physical, mental, sensory, sexual] as well as being left to lie in own piss and choking on throwup after epileptic seizures, many a time was chased with the hoover turned on or asked to remove the glasses from the packed dish washer [sensory hell for self] because they thought the severe self attacking behaviors of mine that resulted were a right laugh;it ended up causing a acute phobia of hoovers and distrust of support staff.

was physicaly forced to go to a hearing test because they said the hearing issues of mine were not real-their idea was; the most profoundly autistic resident didnt have any recogniseable [to them] sensory issues so she therfor acted as a yard stick for autism and it meant anyone else coudnt possibly have sensory issues and were faking it,however they hadnt bothered to think why the lady did not have any sensitive hearing whatsoever-she was diagnosed profoundly deaf,cant hear any sound.
anyway,the hearing test showed that hearing went far above what the hospital testing software coud handle and they had the cheek to say why was there because am wasting their time and taking up the apointment of someone who really needs help with their hearing-had never chosen to go.

one of the medications have been on for many years [still on it] used to be called tegretol ret*d till last year [thankfuly now called tegretol SR],and staff at the institution used to laugh every time about how ironic it was.

was thrown out in less than a month after they got the word the permenent residency wing of the institution was being closed down, and was put into a residential home run by the same people,they never did a risk assessment-which they did for every other institution resident
because if they had they woud have realised self and another woman there were total opposites and she was a vicious bully who targeted the sensory issues and epilepsy;screaming to trigger head banging and seizures so she coud stand and laugh-that was every day for a year until she got to close before she screamed and ended up decking her and knocking her out-was congratulated by some of the staff because of the hell she had put them through but because of that was moved to another home run by the same people-no risk assessment done,same sht again....and again.

last week had visited the institution because it got reopened by another company to run as a respite unit and it has completely changed,was amazed how nice it was;including the staff attitudes.

was detained in an intelectual disability hospital for four months last year which prior to site upgrade had been the mary dendy hospital- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Dendy_Hospital
several staff from the intelectual disability team am a service user of had been staff there-including the pyschologist,two CLDNs and a CSW of mine,there was a pot with a load of tooth brushes in and they were handed one at random,they were given a generic uniform like in prison-in UK sizes small, medium and large,they were locked away and left to rot.
used to live with a lady who had been a resident at the mary dendy and
she has profound autism,but her stay at the hospital makes her behavior so much worse, for example ,she constantly walks around with a cup because she was never allowed drink when she needed it,she walks around with her own clothes in her hand and doesnt let anyone take them off her,she is on a ton of lorazepam because of the anxiety over the hospital and believing she is going back there,she cant live with other people because of how she was treated at the mary dendy [which is why she was moved out of here].

You know, you're not selling me on these institutions KOR

I've talked to someone who worked in a respite unit here. The things she told were not comforting..and this in a place where they were actually trying to do the right thing by the residents.

funny shoud say that-got pulled into the office once for writing truthfuly about the institution on the blog-aparently one of the staff had found it and didnt like the truth [even though it didnt say their name],the managers were like those cold caller sales men type people,trying every pressuring behavior to discourage from ever writing about them again, it didnt work-just bash them on here or facebook instead.

is the respite unit in the UK?
CQC shoud be contacted if theres anything concerning, but respite units are really nothing but baby sitting services for adults,for the purpose of giving the carers/family a break.
it depends on the respite unit,the one of mine that used to be the institution has become a high tech place,its a lot more like a normal home now theyve lost the institutional feel,the staff were welcoming, its run by the same company am living under now.

Other end of the world. I think what bothered me somewhat was not so much that things were happening so much as the parents or caregivers who were getting respite, never find out so something could be done about them. Mainly residents doing things to other residents..you know you get a mix of disabilities in there, immobile people in wheelchairs getting attacked by others, stuff like that. Understaffing. Not abuse, just more like mayhem and unsafe situations. And a small concrete yard and a TV for entertainment.

My mom used to volunteer in a mental hospital, and she went to the autistic nursery they had there a few times. A few of the kids seemed to be able to sense that she was one of them, although she wasn't diagnosed yet.

The place in Staten Island was known as Willowbrook. The documentary was done by Geraldo Rivera in 1972. It was done in multiple parts; I saw most of them. You could probably see at least some of the documentary on YouTube.

...You have provoked a depressing memory for me but , not now .

They used to put people in the "Lunatic Asylum" as it was called back then for very little reason. I've heard of people going in there as teenagers with depression and spending their lives in there, it's so sad I'm currently researching my family history and I found out that in 1903 many people were transferred from the workhouse into Whittingham Asylum. My Great Great Grandfather and many others were all transferred at the same time. I find it hard to believe that so many needed to be institutionalised. They were probably depressed about their situation, being poor and homeless. I believe that many autistic people would have ended up in these kind of places as autism wasn't understood and they wouldn't have known how to deal with it. They would have just seen it as another form of mental illness

I knew somebody who was resident at Willowbrook. He's now working as a maintenance supervisor at the place where I work. He is "learning-disabled" rather than intellectually disabled.

If I evoked a bad memory, ASS-P, I apologize.