Mental: A History of the Madhouse

Mental: A History of the Madhouse (2010) blends Documentary elements. Top cast includes Tamsin Greig, Peter Barham, and Maggi Chapman. The narrative builds around escalating stakes, urgent decisions, and action-driven momentum.

Actor: Tamsin Greig

Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years.