The Last Asylum: A Memoir of Madness in Our Times

In the late 1970s, Barbara Taylor, then an acclaimed young historian, began to suffer from severe anxiety. In the years that followed, Taylor€s world contracted around her illness. Eventually, her struggles were severe enough to lead to her admission to what had once been England€s largest psychiatric institution, the infamous Friern Mental Hospital in North London.

The Last Asylum is Taylor€s breathtakingly blunt and brave account of those years. In it, Taylor draws not only on her experience as a historian, but also, more importantly, on her own lived history at Friern€" once known as the Colney Hatch Lunatic Asylum and today the site of a luxury apartment complex. Taylor was admitted to Friern in July 1988, not long before England€s asylum system began to undergo dramatic change: in a development that was mirrored in America, the 1990s saw the old asylums shuttered, their patients left to plot courses through a perpetually overcrowded and underfunded system of community care. But Taylor contends that the emptying of the asylums also marked a bigger loss, a loss of community. She credits her own recovery to the help of a steadfast psychoanalyst and a loyal circle of friends€" from Magda, Taylor€s manic-depressive roommate, to Fiona, who shares tips for navigating the system and stories of her boyfriend, the €œSpaceman,€ and his regular journeys to Saturn. The forging of that network of support and trust was crucial to Taylor€s recovery, offering a respite from the €œstranded, homeless feelings€ she and others found in the outside world.

A vivid picture of mental health treatment at a moment of epochal change, The Last Asylum is also a moving meditation on Taylor€s own experience, as well as that of millions of others who struggle with mental illness.