Psychological Horror and Mental Patients

I'm not clear on what you need help with, from this post. Authenticity in mental disorders? Means of torture?

Well, let's take a stab at it. For going inside their heads there is always good old fashioned brainwashing. That would be appropriate to build up why these specific individuals were chosen for the experiments. Not sure where you are going with the torture. Is it to be used as a negative reinforcement? I would use it as a way to develop some sort of psychic ability or a psychic connection to another dimension. As for the type of torture, what about an acid trip while experiencing a near death experience brought on by a physical action associated with a possible end of the world. For example, an acid trip while almost drowning, or being slowly buried alive, or trapped in a wind tunnel. Interesting story idea. Who wants the apocalypse witnessed and for what reason? Is this the religious apocalypse or just your basic end of the world?

If you need torture ideas, just read about the way mental patients were treated in the 19th century, such as in Bedlam.

anakhouri79 said:

If you need torture ideas, just read about the way mental patients were treated in the 19th century, such as in Bedlam.

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Yeah, and you don't even have to go back as far as that to find some pretty horrific stuff (USA specific here, I don't know as much about the history in other countries). Lobotomies and shock therapy performed on the LGBT+ population (as recently as the 1940s: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jamie...-gay-aversion-therapy-revealed_b_3497435.html), on women who were too willful or unladylike- and look at the way that people used psychiatry to control and terrorize people of color, particularly black people, in the USA. They used to say that black slaves who tried to run away suffered from "Drapetomania" (since it went against the supposed "nature" of the enslaved to try and be free). To this day schizophrenia is disproportionately diagnosed in black men and the roots of that come from the civil rights era (a good article on the subject: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/witness/201011/how-the-black-man-became-schizophrenic)

Basically there is a lot of nasty history with psychiatry and, honestly, there are still ongoing problems today. For instance, some mentally ill people are very vocally against the very notion of an involuntary psychiatric hold, both because of the abuses in the system- I knew a girl who was sexually assaulted in a psych ward and suffered PTSD around psych wards because of it- but also because it's a terrifying thing to have so little control over your own life when the state deems you unfit to wield such control.

All good stuff to be aware of if you're writing horror along these lines, and potentially a well to draw ideas from.

It'd be nice to see more horror that is sympathetic to the patient and their plight as opposed to demonizing the mentally ill TBH. The horror genre is way to enamored of using the mentally ill as monster figures/ killers/ etc.

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is a story you would find most appropriate, spellbinding stuff. It takes place in a mental hospital and the treatment of the patients is quite unfortunate, what is more unsavory to stomach is the ingredient of truth running throughout, these things happened and Kesey was very experienced in this kind of environment. Fun fact is he was also a voluntary guinea pig for the government run MK-ULTRA program where they assessed the effects of certain drugs for strategic/nefarious usage...

If you're wanting help 'going inside their heads', why not try reading Thomas Harris' Hannibal stories. Or, what might be quicker, watch Hannibal the TV series. I think Hannibal, as a psychiatrist, would give some great ideas of how to get into patients heads and twist the what they think they know.