Abandoned Asylums

This collection of photographs, history, and firsthand accounts gives readers a glimpse at the roots of mental health. These vignettes are born of the personal stories of those who worked at these facilities, those who were institutionalized, and their families. The authors took the time to listen to their stories and endeavored to understand their past and recognize how these events continue to influence the mental health industry today. Pictured throughout are the physical relics of the places—the now largely abandoned asylums of Connecticut—where these stories unfurled.

This collection of photographs, history, and firsthand accounts gives readers a glimpse at the roots of mental health. These vignettes are born of the personal stories of those who worked at these facilities, those who were institutionalized, and their families. The authors took the time to listen to their stories and endeavored to understand their pasts and recognize how these events continue to influence the mental health industry today. Pictured throughout are the physical relics of the places—the now largely abandoned asylums—where these stories unfurled.

Abandoned Asylums takes readers on an unrestricted visual journey inside America's abandoned state hospitals, asylums, and psychiatric facilities, the institutions where countless stories and personal dramas played out behind locked doors and out of public sight. The images captured by photographer Matt Van der Velde are powerful, haunting and emotive. A sad and tragic reality that these once glorious historical institutions now sit vacant and forgotten as their futures are uncertain and threatened with the wrecking ball. Explore a private mental hospital that treated Marilyn Monroe and other celebrities seeking safe haven. Or look inside the seclusion cells at an asylum that once incarcerated the now-infamous Charles Manson. Or see the autopsy theater at a Government Hospital for the Insane that was the scene for some of America's very first lobotomy procedures. With a foreward by renowned expert Carla Yanni examining their evolution and subsequent fall from grace, accompanying writings by Matt Van der Velde detailing their respective histories, Abandoned Asylums will shine some light on the glorious, and sometimes infamous institutions that have for so long been shrouded in darkness.

Discusses tales of the mistreatment that took place in eleven asylums and unexplainable phenomena that occurred in some of them.

Recounts supernatural encounters from ten well-known U.S. institutions, including West Virginia Penitentiary and St. Albans Sanatorium, in a work that features photographs, highlights from site tours, and historical information.