On 27 October 2021, the Epidemic Belfast team organised an event entitled ‘Life and Death in the Asylum, c.1840-1970’ at the Riverside Theatre, Coleraine.
In the nineteenth century, sufferers of mental illness were treated and managed en masse in the asylum. Across Ireland and Britain, the state funded an expansive system of incarceration for the mentally ill, removing them from the care of their family homes. Many women were unfairly sent to the asylum by their husbands and relatives. Mental illness was deeply stigmatised. Living conditions were often squalid. Therapy would nowadays be considered barbaric.