ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that the conventional wisdom to do with the decline in the availability of asylum for the mentally ill in the United Kingdom is largely a myth. The definition of asylum1 is taken to apply to places designated for the reception, care and treatment of the mentally ill (variously defined as mentally disordered, lunatics or insane). A myth is a ‘fictitious or unproven person or thing’. I argue that the myth has arisen because of the failure to distinguish between the different meanings that asylum might have, in particular between the total number of places available (the stock) and the number of persons using those facilities over any period (the flow). Two types of asylum are distinguished in this chapter:
• Asylum 1-referring to the stock of patients (or places) at any point in time, and
• Asylum 2-referring to the number of persons admitted to asylum each year.
