Many decades ago, I worked for a while in one of the old Victorian lunatic asylums in England.  They were by then called ‘long-stay mental hospitals’ and the patients were all highly institutionalized, conditioned by years of dull routine to an existence of passive compliance.  Psychotropic medications helped, and if a patient displayed some reluctance to follow routine, the usual response was to instigate a short program of behavioral conditioning.  It was all designed to be very humane.  The days of violent confrontations were largely in the past, and the dreaded glass syringe containing paraldehyde was becoming only a memory, as were the straitjackets and the padded cells.   But we still wore white coats and walked the wards as if monitoring for any signs of deviance, and the psychiatrist’s verdict was final. What is happening today in the West increasingly reminds me of what I saw in that long-stay mental hospital many decades...(Read Full Article)