Reasons for admission to a Mental Asylum

In family history research, we often find that someone 'vanished'. If a death certificate cannot be found around that time, or if children were raised by someone other than a parent, it is a good idea to check mental asylum records. Reasons for admission included epilepsy, depression (especially post-natal depression), alcoholism, head injury, syphilis, and congenital defects.

For more examples, see 'Children in Mental Asylums'.

Many people spent only a short time in an asylum, and descendants may be unaware of that; so I recommend checking the indexes even if you have no reason to suspect that a person may have been in an asylum.

Names of thousands of patients in Queensland mental asylums (including many people who had previously been in asylums interstate or in the United Kingdom) are on my Web site. Most names are from insanity files or asylum case books. To order copies of those original records, follow the instructions at the bottom of each page.