This episode was originally published in January 2021.
More than two dozen “lunatic asylums” were built throughout Ireland in the 1800s. Today some are hospitals, while others are derelict.
Through interviews and archive research, Rosita Boland pieces together what life was like inside the walls of these state-run institutions.
She discovers that for many of the thousands of Irish citizens who passed through them, mental illness was not the only reason, or even a reason at all.
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