The Asylum

by Brandy Sullivan

Nightmares, tales of haunting, and legends are often based on history. In most cases bits of fact are wildly exaggerated for maximum scare potential. Unfortunately for patients in 19th century asylums their reality was far worse than anyone can imagine. Condemned to a hell masqueraded as treatment, these patients suffered despair and pain greater than any human limit can measure. The Asylum re-visits some of these institutions and takes its readers down a road in history that will never be forgotten.

88 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2013

About the author

As a New England native Brandy Sullivan is no stranger to cold weather. She enjoys warming up by packing her romance novels with a lot of heat. Witty and sarcastic, she enjoys literary characters that are full of spunk with a touch of attitude.
When she isn’t writing she enjoys binge streaming horror movies, painting with acrylics, and devouring novels.
She currently lives in Vermont and has found her own happy ending with her four children and adoring husband.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this book. It was an honest account of the top infamous Asylums and the history of each one. Those looking for sensationalist stories should look elsewhere. While the author does empathize with the patients, he does not make them martyrs nor criminals. To the author they were someone's somebody: a daughter, father, cousin, friend, etc. and, therefore, deserved better from their community and the trusted professionals who were supposed to take care of them.

The only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is due to the lack of editing. There were more than a handful of grammatical mistakes. Other than that, this is by far one of the more straight forward books regarding the history of asylums.

Highly recommend it!

[Mark Goodwin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a pleasant topic to be sure but it was much more interesting than I thought it would be.

It gives information of some of the most notorious Insane Asylums and also the treatment suffered by the inmates.

It is a very good primer for those who have not read anything on this most interesting social and historical topic.

[Dean HOCK1NG · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was only a short book that I read over a weekend but I appreciated the direct writing and informative content in a short space of time. It was quite eye-opening and shocking in parts but I’d recommend it to anyone with an interest on these matters

[Witty · Rating 2 out of 5]

A very short read at 88 pages. If you know anything about the history of mental health institutions in America this book can't offer much for you. Over-embellished, redundant, college-paper writing style; she even uses the words damp and wet in the same sentence to describe something, and at one point says, "the theory behind this in unknown." Alrighty. The book could really have use another go-round in the editing process; it is full of obnoxious typos and grammatical errors, including a very poor use of commas. Almost suprisingly, there is also an embarrassing amount of sentence fragments. It's kind of a disaster.

The author's own opinion takes up about 25% of the book and I got tired of reading about how "dark" and "hellish" the asylums were. Mission: find better adjectives. A few phrases like these would have been fine, but I felt as though they appeared at the end of every paragraph. With the facts provided, one can come up with these conclusions on their own. The content is interesting enough, but I could probably find all this information online. A better, more in-depth book should be read on the subject. But it was free, so.

[Cheryl · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book to satisfy the darker part of your mind where you want to explore the horrible side of humanity through history. Mental health problems are still sneered at and misunderstood, I should know, I have two sons who have different disorders but thankfully we're past the era of Lobotomies and electric shock treatment without pain relief, although we're not as far past it as I thought which this book revealed. There are spelling and grammar issues but they're minor, the book is a quick, easy read and I did learn about some facilities I never knew existed, probably because they're based in America but both British infamous asylums Bedlam and Broadmoor make the list.

[Karen Flesher · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not good at all. Proof reading should have taken place before printing. It was so bad that it made it hard to concentrate on the stories.

[Coley Myers · Rating 1 out of 5]

This type of book brings you into the world of mistreated mental patients. Very disturbing. But of course I couldn't put it down.