Institutional syndrome

Institutional syndrome, also called institutionalization, describes deficits in social and life skills that develop after a person has spent a long period living within a mental hospital, prison, or other closed institution. The British psychiatrist Russell Barton first described the condition in 1959 in his book Institutional Neurosis, arguing that institutions themselves, not only the conditions that brought someone there, could cause lasting psychological harm. Barton identified the loss of independence and personal responsibility inside institutions as a central cause, stripping residents of the everyday decisions and routines that normally support a person's sense of competence, and compounding this with the stigma of being labeled mentally ill. The result is a person who has adapted to institutional life so completely that ordinary independent living, holding a job, managing money, forming relationships, becomes difficult once they leave. The syndrome remains a subject within clinical and abnormal psychology, distinct from institutional economics, an unrelated field of economic theory that happens to share the word institutional in its name.