Harrowing photos show the disturbed and desperate patients of a mental hospital in the 1940s
The images show how patients were badly treated and left abandoned inside Cleveland State Hospital in the 1940s
THESE are the heartbreaking images that show the bleak conditions faced by disturbed and desperate patients at an American mental hospital in the 1940s.
The harrowing photographs show the rundown asylum where patients were badly treated and often left for days on end without any attention.
The pictures were taken by photographers Jerry Cooke and Mary Delaney Cooke inside Cleveland State Hospital in 1946.
The photographers were sent to capture the conditions inside the facility for part of an article that appeared in Life magazine.
The article was used as an exposé to shed light on the shocking conditions inside the institution and to campaign for better facilities.
And when the article, called Bedlam, was published the pictures horrified Americans.
They were shocked to see patients allowed to roam the corridors without wearing any clothes while others were left to rock back and forwards in corners as well as nurses physically restrained them.
Other horrifying photographs showed a woman tied up in a straight jacket and patients forced to work sweeping the floors despite being bare foot.
The article persuaded authorities the best way to treat those with schizophrenia and other similar conditions was to close psychiatric institutions.
This led to many more patients with the conditions being treated at home alongside their families.
The distressing pictures come a day after eerie black and white portraits showed the troubled faces of psychiatric patients in the 1880s.
While another set of haunting images gave a chilling insight into a creepy abandoned psychiatric hospital.