How do mental asylums typically work in D&D-type settings?

This varies heavily on roughly what historical period the setting is drawing material from

>>55097734

Not the OP but there is the fact there is magic that can virtually cure you of whatever mental issues you have as well.

I'll be Monitoring this thread.

>>55097734
>>55097753
If the setting's time period matters, I'm just in a stereotypical 5e Forgotten Realms game, and the asylum my character's broken out of is in Waterdeep.

I don't think it is ever specified as to how they treat mental health. It depends on how the DM wants it to be at the time i suppose. You could make it a Norway expac or a Bulgarian hellscape if you want.

>>55097786
best to just ditch this mental asylum angle and just go with regular imprisonment. Your political enemy could easily have the ear of one the secret lords who has sway over corrupt city watchmen to have you imprisoned all normal like.

The only thing similar to asylum I can recall was the Spellkeep from Baldur's Gate 2, but that was in Amn. Perhaps some dickhole wizard with a contract with the City (through a corrupt secret lord) houses those pronounced mentally unsound with the intention of treatment. Indeed, a few vagrants and ne'er do wells have come out "cured" but really the dick hole wizard is just doing fucked up enchantment/charm research.

I can't imagine Khelben Blackstaff allowing such a farce to continue in his city but he is a busy guy and maybe you can find an ally in him in taking this corrupt institution along with your political enemy.

If you've got agency over what kind of asylum it was, then I'd base it on one thing: Did your character escape because they were being mistreated, or because they are resourceful despite insanity?

If you're going for the former, then it could be more akin to a prison than a hospital. You'd stand a good chance that this is a mage-run institution, where you are more for study than treatment. Experiments are popular in these settings, whether magical or not (would you rather be lobotomized once, or as many times as they can cast Regeneration?). Neglect is also heavy: you definitely wouldn't be fed enough to get fat, and even muscular is a stretch unless you escaped a good while ago. Fellow patients would not necessarily develop good relationships: regular prisons are tense environments without schizophrenia. There'd probably be a high focus on monitoring patient activity, else they'd have more Warlocks than the Fire Code recommends. Group experiments would probably be common: they don't care enough for individual treatment except in special cases. Don't be a special case. Interestingly, these facilities might not chase you all that much: if they care at all about you telling anyone, their word carries more weight than yours.

The latter, on the other hand, would be a good deal less oppressive, yet still restricting. Sanitariums (Sanitarii?) would probably be run by religious orders, or possibly monks if you want to stay away from that. Here, you'd be treated more like a patient in a traditional hospital: fed well, much more socialization, designated therapists, and the like. One-on-one treatment would be more common. You may even have free time to do what you wish around the grounds, so long as you're capable of doing so. One difference, however, is that they would be very interested in getting you back, especially if you're violent or dangerous. They care about you, and want you to be better. If that means they have to chase you to the ends of the plane, so be it.

>>55098344
The issue with normal imprisonment is that my character was in the rich guy, Takata's employment as an assassin, and he knows all of the guy's dirty secrets. Takata's normal M.O. is to either kill his opponents or have them executed by the state, but murder, execution, and standard arrest all invite investigation into the life of this person sitting on top of Takata's pile of dirty laundry. Insanity, on the other hand, is a complete and permanent social discredit. Who in this setting is gonna take the time to look into the day-to-day of a madman that isn't on the loose, and therefore isn't endangering anyone?

>>55098344
*taking this corrupt institutions DOWN...

typo. Apparently Khelben is dead now, but his replacement is still around.

File: abc41681436ffd788da0375cc2b2b39b--history-of-psychology-mental-health-issues.jpg (38KB, 358x322px) Image search: [Google]

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>>55097695
http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/themes/menalhealthandillness/mentalinstitutions

You're not going to find info about specifically D&D or any other magic world's insane assylum.
Add a man with a wizard hand wiggling fingers and going oooh!! and the link will work as a stand in that explains early care for lunatics.

Chained to a wall in a filthy dark cell. Fed gruel till you died like a animal.
If you want to go more interesting, in the 18th century, a doctor declared doing shit like chaining a person to a chair and locking a box that blocked all light on their head helped them.

>>55098413
Shit, read second part of OP. Well, disregard all the parts about you being insane, but there's two options: generic grimdark asylum, or well-meaning but intent on getting you back (bonus points if they genuinely think you're insane and are just trying to help).

>>55097695

Note that one setting that does take a fairly advanced therapeutic approach to the mind is, of all things, Blue Rose. Mind shaping arcana as psychic healing can do a lot of cool things. It's not Prozac, but it might do.

Having read your guys' suggestions, I think I'm gonna treat the asylum in my backstory as essentially a place of torture that knows it's not helping, but keeps doing the same thing because they want to help but they don't know -how- to help.

Now I have a new issue. I wanna go with the asylum being a church thing, and I wanna say that they've sent clerics to collect my character, but I don't know what deity would be appropriate for the church to be under. The best guess I have is either Mystra or Selune.

Any thoughts?