Extensive institutionalisation of people with mental disorders has a brief history lasting just 150 years. Yet asylums feature prominently in modern perceptions of psychiatry's development, on a mental map drawn in sharp contrasts between humanity and barbarity, knowledge and ignorance, and good and bad practice. This Review seeks to nuance the standard narrative of asylums by considering the voices and views of those who were in them at different historical timepoints. The arguments are to caution against dismissing inpatient care outright as simply fundamentally misconceived, and to show the ideological background to many structures and changes, which might superficially seem merely clinical and instrumental. The aim of this Review is to bring out what current mental health systems can learn from an evidence-based analysis of asylums' actual successes and failures in the past.

精神障碍患者的广泛制度化已有短短的历史，仅持续了150年。然而，在人类与野蛮，知识与无知以及好与坏做法之间形成鲜明对比的精神地图上，庇护在现代人对精神病学发展的认​​识中尤为突出。这篇评论试图通过考虑在不同历史时间点在庇护者中的声音和观点来细化庇护的标准叙述。这些论点是要警告不要仅仅因为根本上的误解就完全摒弃了住院治疗，并且要表明许多结构和变化的意识形态背景，这些结构和变化在表面上似乎仅仅是临床上和工具上的。这篇综述的目的是找出目前的精神卫生系统可以从对庇护者的循证医学分析中学到什么