On a hot summer’s night in June 1860, the heavy door of the insane asylum clanged shut behind Elizabeth Packard and she felt all hope desert her. Because she was not mad. She was merely ...

She divorced her husband and founded the Anti-Insane Asylum Society, campaigning for divorced women to retain custody of their children. She also wrote several books, including Insane Asylums ...

According to the superintendent's log, she'd given birth to her third child a month earlier. Her other two had died in infancy. She never again saw the outside of the asylum, where she died of ...

[Warning: This story contains spoilers from Wednesday’s American Horror Story: Asylum finale, “Madness Ends.”] When all was said and done, only one person was left standing in FX’s ...

In 1861, Elizabeth Packard was forcibly removed from her home and committed to an insane asylum because she disagreed with her Calvinist husband's religious beliefs. Playwright Emily Mann tells ...

Reasons for admission into the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia from 1864 to 1889 included laziness, egotism, disappointed love, female disease, mental excitement, cold, snuff ...