Asylum is the name given to the psychiatric establishment or hospital specializing in treating people with mental problems.
The asylum, also known as a hospice, houses people with different types of mental disorders, usually those with more severe pathologies.
People with mental problems are isolated in asylums, removed from social life in order to be intensively treated for their psychiatric disorders.
See also the meaning of Insanity.
There are several criticisms about the traditional functioning of asylums. In fact, with the Psychiatric Reform, the term asylum began to be replaced by "psychiatric hospital" or "clinical center of psychiatry".
The World Health Organization (WHO) suggests that developed countries close their psychiatric hospitals, develop alternative housing, community services and individualized community care programs for the mentally ill in serious condition.
Etymologically, the origin of the word asylum is in the Latin mania, which means "madness", "a state of rage" or "being angry".
