History Main / GoAmongMadPeople

%%* ''Literature/ShutterIsland'' (and its film adaptation) is based on this premise. [[TomatoInTheMirror Or is it?]]

* In the uncompleted, web-released TabletopGame/{{Ravenloft}} supplement ''Van Richten's Guide To The Mists'', the chapter on outlanders (= people from other game-settings) has a scene in which a cleric from an outlander adventuring party pleads for his former comrade-at-arms to help free him from a mental asylum. Unfortunately, her therapy to rid her of her "delusion" that she'd come from another world has apparently worked: she refuses to help him escape and expresses the hope that he'll soon be "cured" like she was.

* In ''Theatre/TheDuchessOfMalfi'', the Duchess's brothers attempt to drive her insane with the help of half-a-dozen genuine madmen. Done right, it's a seriously disturbing scene. But then, what do you expect from John Webster?

* In ''VideoGame/SecondSight'', the protagonist (and the LoveInterest) is drugged to make them appear insane and locked away to keep them from revealing a conspiracy (as they have PsychicPowers). Luckily they get better after the drugs have worn off. Unlike many uses of this trope, at least one psychiatrist seems angry with the way the protagonist is treated (albeit because the drug used is experimental having been tested on monkeys, rather than actually believing that they're really sane) and can be heard complaining to the orderlies about it.
* In ''VideoGame/{{Sanitarium}}'' the PlayerCharacter starts in the titular asylum, even though he may not be quite insane.
* ''VideoGame/TheSims2'' fans created a SelfImposedChallenge based on this concept, called the Asylum Challenge. The player creates an ill-equipped BedlamHouse and fills it with inmates, only one of whom they are allowed to control-- [[SurroundedByIdiots the rest]] run on their [[ArtificialStupidity infamously inept free will]].
* ''VideoGame/TheDarknessII'' has a confusing sub-plot that makes it look like the protagonist is actually in an insane asylum and the events of the game are nothing more than his delusions. Revealed to be a [[spoiler: BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind]]

* ''VideoGame/TheElderScrollsIVOblivion'': [[MadGod Sheogorath]]'s realm, The Shivering Isles (sometimes called [[MeaningfulName Madhouse]]), is basically a gigantic free-roam asylum and all of its residents are self-functioning inmates with at least some quirky mental disorder (even it's relatively mild or even slightly beneficial; creativity is one of Sheogorath's spheres, after all). One person though, a beggar named Uungor, believes that he's sane and that he's there by mistake. The thing is that he's so obsessed with escaping the Isles and proving/retaining his sanity that he's convinced that everyone is an agent of Sheogorath's trying to break him, and that anything that happens to him is part of a trick to make him lose his mind, proving that he really isn't right in the head.

* In ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' Homer gets committed after letting Bart fill out his psychiatric tests (which he was taking in the first place because he wore a pink shirt thanks to Bart putting his red hat in the wash). {{Shout Out}}s to ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'' [[HilarityEnsues ensue]].

* Professor Milo from Franchise/TheDCU is supposed to have been committed to Arkham Asylum while under the influence of madness gas, and then failed to convince the wardens he was sane.

* Todd Casil, from the ''ComicBook/JohnnyTheHomicidalManiac'' Spinoff ''ComicBook/{{Squee}}!'' was sent to an insane asylum by the end of his series, despite being one of the few sane characters ever presented in the comic. It is implied he quickly escaped somehow, however.

** In "The Cigars of the Pharaoh", Tintin is committed (he really wanted to commit two other guys who were under the permanent influence [[ChemicallyInducedInsanity of a drug]], but the BigBad had a letter faked which claimed that ''Tintin'' was the mad one, and dangerous too. Oh, and that he would insist that it wasn't him but his friends who were really crazy.)
** In "The Black Island", [[MorallyAmbiguousDoctorate Dr. J.W. Müller]] plots to send him to an insane asylum he works at, and inflict him a "special treatment" that will make him genuinely insane. And he implies it's not the first time.
* In Creator/AlanMoore's ''ComicBook/FromHell'', [[spoiler: Annie Crook]] suffers a particularly nightmarish version of this trope after [[SheKnowsTooMuch she becomes privy to certain secrets that Queen Victoria would rather keep under wraps]]. [[spoiler: She's dragged to an insane asylum by Victoria's goons...then [[UsefulNotes/JackTheRipper William Gull]] makes her ''authentically'' insane by surgically removing her thyroid gland, turning her into a gibbering lunatic who's fully incapable of spreading the Crown's secrets.]]

[[folder:Fanfiction]]

* In ''Film/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', [=McMurphy=] pretends insanity because he figures a stint in a mental hospital will be easier than the prison farm sentence he was going to get; he finds himself indefinitely detained in an institution ruled by the sadistic Nurse Ratched. [[spoiler:He ends up getting lobotomized as punishment for angrily strangling her when she had caused another patient to kill himself.]]
* Sarah Connor in ''Film/Terminator2JudgmentDay'' was definitely more insane after spending years in a mental asylum (attacking the psychiatrist) than she was before (merely believing in the Terminators). Although it is possible that her experience in the first Terminator set her a path which leads her to violence, including trying to blow up a computer factory. It's also possible that knowing what she knows about the future [[GoMadFromTheRevelation addled her brains a bit]]. Based on what we see, it's clear that she was subjected to sexual abuse by the staff and another mistreatment by her therapist.
* The wonderfully quirky French film ''Film/KingOfHearts'', in which the madmen become the sane people in an abandoned, war-torn town.

* This is part of the premise of ''Film/{{Quills}}'', based on the real-life incarceration of the Creator/MarquisDeSade in Charenton Asylum. The Marquis' substantial wealth had allowed him to be committed rather than executed and to enjoy a substantial level of material comfort. But once the new administrator takes over and starts depriving the Marquis of his possessions and basically begins torturing him as a form of "therapy", Sade's mental state rapidly deteriorates.
* In the 1963 film ''Film/ShockCorridor'', written and directed by Samuel Fuller, a reporter gets himself committed to an asylum to solve the death of an inmate and (he hopes) win the Pulitzer Prize. It doesn't end well.
* In ''Film/KPax'', the main character "prot" claims to be an alien who is able to travel through light rays. Believing him insane, he is handed over to a New York hospital psychiatric ward. During the film, he is revealed to have uncanny skills and knowledge, and also while under hypnotic regression he seems to remember traumatic events that happened to a man named Robert Porter. By the end of the film, prot announces it's time for him to depart from the planet, leaving behind his catatonic body. The film [[GainaxEnding leaves the viewer wondering]] whether prot really was an alien who took Porter as a human host or whether he really is just an insane man whose catatonia is a result of being forced to confront his delusions. ([[Literature/KPax The novel]] that the movie is based on has two sequels that confirm his alien origins.)

* In ''Film/TheWolfman2010'', Lawrence gets locked in an asylum for ranting that he's a werewolf. He'd previously been committed as a boy, to help him suppress the trauma of his mother's death, [[spoiler: because he'd been ranting (quite truthfully) that his ''father'' was a werewolf and had killed her.]] One of his psychiatrists makes the grave mistake of showing him to colleagues when the moon is about to get full, in hopes of showing his delusion when he doesn't transform. It doesn't end well for them.
* In ''Film/RevengeOfThePinkPanther'', Inspector Clouseau gets taken to an insane asylum while DisguisedInDrag, and tries to convince the cops that he's actually Jacques Clouseau, Europe's greatest detective. Another patient retorts that ''he'' is Europe's greatest detective... [[NapoleonDelusion Hercule Poirot]]. It doesn't help that the news has mistakenly reported that Clouseau has been assassinated.
* At one point late in ''Film/TheOracle'', the attempts on Jennifer's life end up getting her put in the nuthouse. Granted, by the time the museum chase is over, she's in hysterics, so the museum guard does the only thing he can do for her at this point: call the men in white coats.

* There is an interesting example in H.G. Wells' short story, "The Country of the Blind". The eponymous society believes that the protagonist, the OnlySaneMan, is insane with his talk of sight, and thus propose to cure him by gouging out his eyes.
* In ''Literature/OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest'', [=McMurphy=] pretends insanity because he figures a stint in a mental hospital will be easier than the prison farm sentence he was going to get; he finds himself indefinitely detained in an institution ruled by the sadistic Nurse Ratched. [[spoiler:He ends up getting lobotomized as punishment for making a nuisance of himself.]]

* In Philippa Gregory's ''Literature/TheBoleynInheritance'', Jane Boleyn pretends to be mad to escape being executed for treason. Later chapters suggest that she, already self-deluded, has finally gone over the edge. To no avail, sadly, as the King has changed the law to accommodate her death.
* Susanna Kaysen's auto-biographical book ''Literature/GirlInterrupted'' is an interesting exploration of this trope. It's debatable how mad we'd consider her today, but she was certainly adversely affected by her experience in the asylum, as were other inmates. On the other hand, it helped her get over her borderline disorder.
* The protagonist of ''Literature/TheSerialKillersClub'' insists this isn't the case. After all, unlike the other club members, he hasn't killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill him. Of course, if any of them realize this, he has to bump them off, so his body count [[NeverOneMurder grows higher and higher]] as the club membership dwindles--and his thought processes grow more and more skew.
* The catch behind ''Literature/CatchTwentyTwo'' is that you can only be removed from flight duties because of insanity. Only someone who was sane would try to prove they were insane to stop being sent on missions.
* Played with in ''Literature/InFuryBorn''. After the attack on Matheson's World, when Allie starts displaying unusual behavior (on account of having one of the Greek Furies in her head), she is placed in a mental hospital. She then decides to play up her apparent insanity in order to hide the fact that she ''isn't'' insane, so she and the Fury can escape and start their RoaringRampageOfRevenge.
* Ana is ''Literature/TheGlimpse'', leading to the realisation that they aren't so different.
* British spy Literature/{{Quiller}} hides (as a self-committed patient) in a mental institution from a hitman who's stalking him in ''Quiller's Run''. He doesn't go crazy, but the atmosphere of the place does put him on edge, so he engages in a reckless gambit -- deliberately revealing his location so the hitman will come there, so Quiller can tackle him on territory he knows.

* In the ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'' episode "Frame of Mind", Riker has a role in a play as a character whom this happens to, but then it turns into a CuckooNest as play and reality start mixing, and Riker has to convince himself he's not insane. It turns out Riker is on a mission (which he's preparing for during the course of the play) during which he's captured by aliens who are using a MindProbe; his fantasy is a coping mechanism so he'll keep his sanity.

* An episode of ''Series/{{Colditz}}'' involved one of the [=POWs=] pretending to be mad in order to be invalided out. Perhaps not surprisingly, after keeping up the pretense for months he really ''does'' go mad. This was an adaptation of a genuine Colditz escape. Unlike the fictional version, the officer that tried it both succeeded in getting sent home and was still relatively sane when he was.

* An episode of ''Series/Stingray1985'' is featuring Ray on an undercover mission in a mental hospital after one of the doctors working there recruits him. As soon as he arrives he has to find out that she is actually a patient .. [[spoiler: but her reports were true and he has to stop Russian spies from interrogating a scientist who is a patient there.]]

* Invoked in ''Series/TheKilling''; Sarah is committed by the owner of a casino she had been harassing, who claims she was found threatening to jump off the roof. Their intention is to get her locked away for a few days so her cowboy investigation won't screw up an upcoming mayoral election which the casino has a large stake it.

* A variant happened to Sierra's original personality, Priya Tsetsang in ''Series/{{Dollhouse}}''. She spurned the advances of a doctor, so he had her put in the asylum and put on enough drugs to drive her insane, then had her sent to the Dollhouse so he could hire her.
* In ''Series/TheFlyingCestmir'', Cestmir's father is mistaken for insane and committed, because his son sometimes poses as him. Cestmir's adult form (caused by one of the magical flowers) looks like his father. Cestmir is a weird boy as it is, and with his cloudcuckoolander pre-teen behaviour, he just can't successfully pass for a sane adult.
* [[IntrepidReporter Lana Winters]]' story on ''Series/AmericanHorrorStoryAsylum'' has her infiltrating the titular BedlamHouse to research the Bloody Face killer. She gets caught, and Sister Jude has her locked up in order to silence her from revealing the inhumane conditions inside, using [[LipstickLesbian her homosexuality]] ([[DeliberateValuesDissonance the show is set in]] TheSixties) as a figleaf to justify it and blackmailing her 'roommate' (who worked as a schoolteacher and risked losing her career if she'd been outed) into signing off on it.
* ''Series/TheEqualizer''. In "The Last Campaign", a politician's aide [[YouKnowTooMuch who discovers her boss is involved in blackmail]] is placed in a mental institution after a faked drug overdose. [=McCall=] gets a friendly psychiatrist to commit him ("Someone I suspect you have wanted to commit for a very long time.") for 24 hours observation so he can make contact. Another of [=McCall=]'s friends, also posing as a patient, is placed in there as a bodyguard. Which is necessary as the politician has planted his own man among the staff, giving her doctored injections to drive her permanently crazy (and when this plan fails, arrange a more permanent suicide).
* ''Series/{{Wiseguy}}''. Undercover agent Vinnie Terranova spends an episode in the psychiatric ward after someone alters his hospital file to make it look like he's a violent inmate. While there he ends up confronting his guilt over having betrayed mob boss Sonny Steelgrave.

* ''Series/MissionImpossible''. In "Committed", a corrupt state Governor has put the wife of a crime boss in a mental institution on an isolated island because she witnessed a murder, and IMF is tasked with delivering her to the trial before she's been driven insane.

A sub-trope of WrongfullyCommitted, something that will indubitably go hand in hand together. See also HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook.

* ''{{Series/Tracker}}'' has this in “The Long Road Home”. Cole gets himself committed by wandering around in his underwear like when he first arrived on Earth. He wants to collect a fugitive inhabiting a patient but also hopes to find out what the guy knows about a recently found alien artifact. But he has to lower the guy’s medication to do it and it results in the guy getting aggressive and giving Cole truth serum just as he’s about to leave. Cole has to fight off the doctors and get outside to save Mel before the fugitive attacks her.

* ''Film/GoodGuysWearBlack'' (1978). Creator/ChuckNorris' character tries to force a corrupt politician to resign, but the politician reveals that their only witness (his aide) is incommunicado in the psychiatric ward after 'going insane'. So Chuck makes the politician disappear permanently, and a news report (arranged by his CIA friend) states that the politician has resigned and will be replaced by the aide once he gets out of the hospital where he's having a 'routine medical checkup'.

* ''Literature/ShutterIsland'' (and its film adaptation) is based on this premise. [[TomatoInTheMirror Or is it?]]

* In Philippa Gregory's ''The Boleyn Inheritance'', Jane Boleyn pretends to be mad to escape being executed for treason. Later chapters suggest that she, already self-deluded, has finally gone over the edge. To no avail, sadly, as the King has changed the law to accommodate her death.

* The protagonist of ''The Serial Killers Club'' insists this isn't the case. After all, unlike the other club members, he hasn't killed anyone who wasn't trying to kill him. Of course, if any of them realize this, he has to bump them off, so his body count [[NeverOneMurder grows higher and higher]] as the club membership dwindles--and his thought processes grow more and more skew.

%%* ''Series/{{Psych}}'' episode "Shawn, Interrupted"

A sub-trope of WrongfullyCommitted, something that will indubitably go hand-and-hand together. See also HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook.

* The wonderfully quirky French film ''Film/TheKingOfHearts'', in which the madmen become the sane people in an abandoned, war-torn town.

* Something of a TruthInTelevision: a well-known psychology experiment is to send people to present themselves to psychiatric hospitals with minor complaints, drop the complaints after they've been committed and see how long it takes to get out. In 1973, the average was 19 days, and most were diagnosed with Schizophrenia. ''{{Website/Snopes}}'' has more at http://www.snopes.com/medical/asylum/crazybus.asp. Of course, there's no way of knowing how many people get put away and are ''never'' revealed to be sane, and it's a ''very common'' legend... The participants in one of these experiments reported that they were only released after admitting they were crazy. Insisting they were sane made the staff insist on keeping them there.
* After the psychiatrist responsible for the study, David Rosenhan, published his findings, another psychiatrist who worked in a mental hospital indignantly retorted that Rosenhan's findings surely weren't representative of the profession at large, and challenged Rosenhan to send some sane impostors ("pseudopatients" was the term Rosenhan used) to his hospital. Rosenhan agreed, and a month later the psychiatrist wrote to him saying that he was fairly sure that several of his patients were impostors sent by Rosenhan. Of course, Rosenhan hadn't sent any.

* Many totalitarian governments have reportedly dealt with troublesome citizens by slapping them with a diagnosis and shipping them off to be 'rehabilitated'. The Soviet Union even came up with its own made-up illness -- 'sluggish schizophrenia'.

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* In ''{{VideoGame/Psychonauts}}'' an orderly at a madhouse, [[FamousAncestor Fred Bonaparte]], attemps to get through to a more reserved inmate by playing a strategy board game with him. However, after losing to the "madman" numerous times, the genetic spirit of Napoleon gets fed up and [[NapoleonDelusion attempts to take over his body]], causing the orderly to become an inmate himself.

* In ''VideoGame/Psychonauts'' an orderly at a madhouse, [[FamousAncestor Fred Bonaparte]], attemps to get through to a more reserved inmate by playing a strategy board game with him. However, after losing to the "madman" numerous times, the genetic spirit of Napoleon gets fed up and [[NapoleonDelusion attempts to take over his body]], causing the orderly to become an inmate himself.

* The wonderfully quirky French film ''The King of Hearts'', in which the madmen become the sane people in an abandoned, war-torn town.

* ''Good Guys Wear Black'' (1978). Creator/ChuckNorris' character tries to force a corrupt politician to resign, but the politician reveals that their only witness (his aide) is incommunicado in the psychiatric ward after 'going insane'. So Chuck makes the politician disappear permanently, and a news report (arranged by his CIA friend) states that the politician has resigned and will be replaced by the aide once he gets out of the hospital where he's having a 'routine medical checkup'.
* In the Sam Neill movie ''Hostage'' (1992), a British agent mentions that due to a section of the Mental Health Act, he can be forcibly admitted to an institution and undergo compulsive drug therapy as well, with only members of his immediate family allowed access -- he only has an ex-wife, who doesn't apply as family. His ex is aghast and asks if ''he'' did this to others, causing the agent to respond coldly, "They were the enemy..."

* ''{{Tintin}}'':

* ''FanFic/{{Bird}}'': One of the running themes is that most of the patients are not actually ''insane''. Sveta being a chief example. However, all of them are dangerous, and many do have psychological problems they are dealing with. Being locked up in an asylum with the actual crazy ones does not do any favors for the ones that are sane, however.

* ''VideoGame/TheSims 2'' fans created a SelfImposedChallenge based on this concept, called the Asylum Challenge. The player creates an ill-equipped BedlamHouse and fills it with inmates, only one of whom they are allowed to control-- [[SurroundedByIdiots the rest]] run on their [[ArtificialStupidity infamously inept free will]].
* ''VideoGame/TheDarknessII'' has a confusing sub-plot that makes it look like the protagonist is actually in an insane asylum and the events of the game is nothing more than his delusions. Revealed to be a [[spoiler: BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind]]
* In between VideoGame/BioShock1 and VideoGame/BioShock2 during the "Something in The Sea" advertising campaign, Mark Meltzer calls Detective Benny Stango and tells him he's going to kill himself. Benny, who up to this point has blamed Mark for his daughter's disappearance and vowed to bring him to justice, [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold freaks out and tells Mark to calm down]] as he goes to protect Mark from himself. However, the mental breakdown was a trick to get into Tollevue Hospital, where he could talk to Orrin Oscar Lutwidge, a man who knew information that Mark needed about Rapture. Benny was ''pissed'' when he figured out that Mark faked it.
* The DLC story for ''{{Videogame/Outlast}}'', entitled "The Whistleblower'', starts off with the player character getting thrown into the Mount Massive Asylum and also [[GotVolunteered volunteered]] for the Morphogenic Engine Program because he sent an email out to Miles Upshur in order to blow the place wide open. Thankfully all ends well, however, and he's able to escape in the chaos when everything starts going horribly wrong for the asylum's owners.

* Something of a TruthInTelevision: a well-known psychology experiment is to send people to present themselves to psychiatric hospitals with minor complaints, drop the complaints after they've been committed and see how long it takes to get out. In 1973, the average was 19 days, and most were diagnosed with Schizophrenia. ''{{WebSite/Snopes}}'' has more at http://www.snopes.com/medical/asylum/crazybus.asp. Of course, there's no way of knowing how many people get put away and are ''never'' revealed to be sane, and it's a ''very common'' legend... The participants in one of these experiments reported that they were only released after admitting they were crazy. Insisting they were sane made the staff insist on keeping them there.

* On ''Series/{{Smallville}}'', in the appropriately titled episode "Asylum", Lionel Luthor came up with a plan to have his own troublesome son, Lex Luthor, committed to a mental hospital and Lex's memory of the past few weeks erased via electroshock therapy, so that Lex would stop investigating his father's shady dealings. To that end, Lionel had Lex's drinking water laced with psychotropic drugs to make him appear insane. It didn't help that Clark Kent while investigating his friend Lex's sudden strange behaviour, was forced to reveal his Superman powers ''right in front of Lex'' to save Lex's life. Of course there were no other witnesses, and when the Men in White arrived with the straitjacket and Lex kept insisting that he had seen Clark ''stop a car with his own hands'', Clark had already fled, for fear that his secret cover would be blown and his powers made public, leaving Lex and the wrecked car. Clark later did his best to free Lex from the mental hospital, but not before Lex had been drugged with tranquilizers, had made an unsuccessful attempt to flee, was restrained, was ''nearly'' freed by Clark only to see Clark beaten up by several superpowered inmates with a fistful of Kryptonite, and was finally dragged off to undergo electroshock therapy. After which he was released, all his memories of what he had witnessed gone forever. Which kind of bit Lionel in the butt. He had, by this point, already spent some time investigating Clark to try and figure out the [[SecretIdentity mystery]] surrounding him. He then sees a security recording of Clark visiting Lex in the asylum, where Lex admits to knowing Clark's secret - but he only sees this ''after'' he's had Lex given the electroshock.
** A later episode had a Phantom Zone prisoner trying to take over Clark's body by simulating a reality where the events of the pilot episode were actually him going mad and being admitted to a madhouse for believing he was an invincible alien.

-->-- '''Creator/LewisCarroll''', ''Literature/AlicesAdventuresInWonderland'', the TropeNamer

* ''Webcomic/{{Narbonic}}'': When Helen breaks up with Dave, she actually remarks "You don't want to go among mad people." This refers of course to herself and her colleagues. Ironically, after reading the quote in context, [[spoiler: Dave himself goes mad, exactly what Helen was trying to prevent by breaking up with him. She told him that he wasn't the one sane person in the crazy house that he thought he was - he was an emerging MadScientist who Helen had been studying for years to try and nail down what made Mad Scientists mad]].

* Ana is ''Literature/TheGlimpse'', leading to the realisation that they are NotSoDifferent.

* ''Theatre/TwelfthNight'': Poor, poor Malvolio. Because he's a dark-clad, self-possessed puritan who frowns upon drinking and music, the woman he works for naturally thinks he's gone insane when he shows up wearing bright yellow stockings and obnoxiously flirting with her. Actually, he received [[LoveLetterLunacy a fake love letter]] that told him she'd love him better if he did these things. The servants who were in on the plot promptly chain him up in a dark room (the standard treatment for madmen back in the day) and mess with his mind by sending "the curate" (actually TheJester in disguise) to talk nonsense to him in the hopes of making him "sane." By the end of most productions, he's pretty much gone off the deep end.

* In ''Series/DueSouth'', Fraser goes undercover in a mental hospital in order to investigate a string of suspicious suicides there. He gains admittance via SarcasticConfession.

See also HadToComeToPrisonToBeACrook.

* Disney's ''Disney/BeautyAndTheBeast'' movie has Belle's father being imprisoned in the asylum because Gaston wants him out of the way so that he can try and marry Belle.