Best movies like Willowbrook: The Last Great Disgrace

A petty criminal fakes insanity to serve his sentence in a mental ward rather than prison. He soon finds himself as a leader to the other patients—and an enemy to the cruel, domineering nurse who runs the ward.

A man with learning difficulties suffers neglect and ill-treatment, and this is only exasperated when his parents die and nobody seems to know what to do with him. A sequel to this film, titled "Walter and June", was released in 1983 and set 19 years later in time. In the United States, these two are sometimes bundled together under the title "Loving Walter".

An ex-con's future is threatened by his brother's involvement with drugs.

Three Vietnam vets have become so conditioned to violence that they have developed psychotic tendencies. They kidnap people, brutalize them, then turn them loose and hunt them like animals. However the father of one of their earlier victims is plotting a vicious revenge against them.

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

A young psychiatrist applies for a job at a mental asylum, and must pass a test by interviewing four patients. He must figure out which of the patients, is in fact, the doctor that he would be replacing if hired.

Trevor Blackburn is accused of murdering his girlfriend, Faith, in a brutal ritual. He's sentenced to live in an experimental rehabilitation community and falls into a coma. When he wakes up, he meets the mysterious Dr. Ek, who tortures Trevor in an attempt to learn the whereabouts of a powerful occult book. As other patients start to disappear, Trevor begins to wonder who and where he really is.

London, 1761. St. Mary's of Bethlehem, a sinister madhouse, is visited by wealthy people who enjoy watching the patients confined there as if they were caged animals. Nell Bowen, one of the visitors, is horrified by the deplorable living conditions of the unfortunate inhabitants of this godforsaken place, better known as Bedlam.

An investigative reporter Nellie Bly, who’s on a mission to expose the deplorable conditions and mistreatment of patients at the notorious Women’s Lunatic Asylum, and feigns mental illness in order to be institutionalized to report from the inside. The movie is an account of actual events surrounding Nellie’s stay beginning after she has undergone treatment, leaving her with no recollection of how she came to the asylum or her real identity.

With the help of his girlfriend Cathy and Dr. Fong, a psychiatrist, ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett poses as a madman in order to be admitted to a mental institution where a bloody murder has been committed.

A scientist comes to believe that evil is a disease of the blood and that the flesh of a skeleton he has brought back from New Guinea contains it in a pure form. Convinced that his wife, a Folies Bergere dancer who went insane, manifested this evil he is terrified that it will be passed on to their daughter. He tries to use the skeleton's blood to immunise her against this eventuality, but his attempt has anything but the desired result.

Chris is a once promising high school athlete whose life is turned upside down following a tragic accident. As he tries to maintain a normal life, he takes a job as a janitor at a bank, where he ultimately finds himself caught up in a planned heist.

Karl Childers, a mentally disabled man, has been in the custody of the state mental hospital since the age of 12 for killing his mother and her lover. Although thoroughly institutionalized, he is deemed fit to be released into the outside world.

A young psychiatric nurse goes to work at a lonesome asylum following a murder. There, she experiences varying degrees of torment from the patients.

A mental patient escapes from the looney bin in drag, robs a bank, and goes on the lam!

Sam, a neurodivergent man, has a daughter with a homeless woman who abandons them when they leave the hospital, leaving Sam to raise Lucy on his own. But as Lucy grows up, Sam's limitations as a parent start to become a problem and the authorities take her away. Sam convinces high-priced lawyer Rita to take his case pro bono and in turn teaches her the value of love and family.

A crew from a paranormal reality television show lock themselves in a haunted psychiatric hospital. They search for evidence of paranormal activity as they shoot what ends up becoming their final episode.

Vincent Bruce, a war veteran, begins working as an occupational therapist at Poplar Lodge, a private psychiatric facility for wealthy people where he meets Lilith Arthur, a charming young woman suffering from schizophrenia, whose fragile beauty captivates all who meet her.

The story of a mentally unstable loner lost in a life forced upon him. By night Oliver aimlessly wanders the streets and bars on what can only be described as a truly shocking and humiliating killing spree. His only savior and possible way out of a life he is desperate to escape comes in the form of the beautiful Sophia with her sweet eccentricity and naivety to the danger she has put herself in.

The corporate board has Elmer committed to an asylum because he thinks he's a rabbit. At the sanitarium, Bugs agrees to trade places with Elmer.

Follows the fate of Lyle, a violent adolescent who, in lieu of prison, is placed in a juvenile mental institution where he encounters a group of equally troubled teens. This motley crew - abused, sexually confused, violent, and yet hanging on by their grit and anger - becomes Lyle's last lifeline as he fights to find meaning in a world that seems to defy understanding.

Teenager Lynn kills her father while he tries to rape her - the receiving officer at the mental hospital cannot convince her that her father is dead. After electric shock treatment she escapes in a nurses car. There is a farm where the manager is unable to feed his pigs on the usual swill, they have tasted blood - Human Blood! Lynn stumbles on the farm, she is looking for work she explains. "Papa they tell me, what do you see One little girl as deadly as can be." The circle begins, feed people to the pigs - then eat the pigs.

An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn't let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of "Carmen Jones", becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star - with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn't wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.

The film is a stark and graphic portrayal of the conditions that existed at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. TITICUT FOLLIES documents the various ways the inmates are treated by the guards, social workers and psychiatrists.

David Blair directs this powerful British Drama, loosely inspired by John Steinbeck's novel 'Of Mice and Men'. Set in Nottingham, the film revolves around the relationship between the thuggish Danny (Stephen Graham) and Joseph (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje), a giant of a man with a mental age of seven. When Danny finds himself in debt to a local crime boss, he feels he is left with no choice but to manipulate Joseph into participating in a series of underground cage fights from which Danny can pay his debts.

LITTLE CHENIER: A CAJUN STORY is the story of a young man who lives a simple life on a houseboat in the Louisiana bayou with his mentally handicapped brother until one is accused of a crime in the small town.

A significant number of American children and teenagers - from all social backgrounds - suffer from mental disorders, schizophrenia, autism and emotional problems, leading them to isolation from society while treating their issues in mental health facilities. But there's no end in sight for those young individuals when they face obstacles and mistreatment in inadequate places under the supervision of careless and inexperienced professionals. The documentary follows some of those public mental institutions and another private center dealing with troubled kids and reveals what's wrong with their procedures, and the irreparable harm they cause in those patients.

The infamous Odenbrook Sanitarium closed after a mass suicide occurred within its walls. Sixty years later, six college students armed with cameras and recording equipment venture into the asylum to prove the existence of the paranormal. Thrills turn into nightmares as members of the group go missing without a sound, cell phones mysteriously vanish, corridors turn into mazes, walls appear where doors once stood, flashlights fail and something or someone begins toying with the group. Days later, when five of the six friends turn up missing, the lone survivor must go through the recovered footage in order to clear his name and find out what happened to his friends

Backwoods bombshell Myrtle marries George, only to find out that George neither can nor wants to satisfy her desires. Lots of heavy breathing, roughing-up and weirdo moralism ensues.

A baby sitter is stuck watching over a young brat on Halloween night who keeps playing vicious pranks on her. To add to her trouble the boy's deranged father has escaped from an asylum and is planning on making a visit.

An intellectually-challenged man and woman meet, fall in love, and are determined to get married, despite the initial objections of their families and friends. Based on a true story.

A young man journeys through a bizarre land inhabited by mentally impaired people, demons, and snails.

Martha Horgan is a withdrawn, mentally disabled woman who lives with her aunt, Frances. One of Martha's unusual traits is that she doesn't lie, a quality that leads to her getting fired from a dry-cleaning shop thanks to the actions of the shifty Getso. Conflict seems to follow Martha, since she also becomes romantically involved with local fix-it man, Mackey, who is sleeping with Frances as well.

A young woman collapses on the disco dance floor of what's revealed to be strychnine poisoning. Assuming that this is an attempt at suicide, her boyfriend and doctor have her committed to the Fifth Floor, an asylum with obviously crazy inmates and a predatory orderly. The problem is, she's still sane!

A young woman is brought to an asylum to receive special treatment from a mysterious doctor. Dr. Spector does more than just run the hospital -- he offers his patients as sacrifices to Satan.

Child abuse, mental illness, and forbidden love converge in this mystery involving a mother and daughter who were thought to be living a fairy tale life that turned out to be a living nightmare.

A disturbed young mother with some serious psychological problems begins to take them out on her toddler daughter.

When the matriarch of the family suddenly dies, custody of a mentally disabled mother is inherited by her normal daughter.

A troubled teen is given the chance to redeem his criminal debt to society.

Secrets, murders and lies... all in the name of family. In the middle of nowhere sits the Armadillo Café.The once popular, but now desolate, café is run by a strange family led a troubled, booze-addled mother (Betty Buckley) and a disturbed family (Lori Heuring, Brad Renfro, Jonathon Schaech). Their dark secrets are threatened when Sarah (Clare Kramer) arrives, seeking answers to her past.Turmoil reigns and emotions boil over as the horrifying truth unravels and Sarah barely escapes with her life.

Asylum is a taut psychological thriller about a deranged fearsome killer running lose in an abandoned high security Asylum. Pitting the county psychiatrist Dr. Maggie Belham against the psychotic maniac, Dr Belham is trapped in a maze of corridors, and her only help is the janitor, Quitz who may in fact be a forgotten asylum inmate.

A local handyman saves a child in a fire, but the burns he receives disfigure his face so much that the townspeople avoid him.

This is the story of actress Frances Farmer, her struggles with mental illness and involuntary confinement in an insane asylum.

A young woman who is obsessed with Buster Keaton stays in the sanatorium where the actor was once a patient.

Behind the locked doors of a mental institution resides crooked politico Judge Drake, free from prosecution so long as he pretends to be crazy. To get the goods on Drake, private detective Ross Stewart has himself committed to the asylum as a patient. Meanwhile, reporter Kathy Lawrence, posing as Stewart's wife, acts as his liaison to the outside world.

Documentary which tells the fascinating and poignant story of the closure of Britain's mental asylums. In the post-war period, 150,000 people were hidden away in 120 of these vast Victorian institutions all across the country. Today, most mental patients, or service users as they are now called, live out in the community and the asylums have all but disappeared. Through powerful testimonies from patients, nurses and doctors, the film explores this seismic revolution and what it tells us about society's changing attitudes to mental illness over the last sixty years.

The Richardson Olmsted Campus, a former psychiatric center and National Historic Landmark, is seeing new life as it undergoes restoration and adaptation to a modern use.

When the superintendent of the Canadian insane asylum, Dr. Maurice Bucke, meets poet Walt Whitman, his life and that of his wife and patients is radically changed. Like Dr. Bucke, Whitman has avant-garde ideas on the subject of mental illness. "Dreamers" is based on true events. Dr. Bucke became an important biographer of Walt Whitman.

While doing community service at a special needs home, a rebellious teenage girl develops an unlikely friendship with a young mentally handicapped man who lives there.

Angel, a woman who was horribly abused by her grandmother as a little girl and institutionalized after killing her, embarks on a killing spree as an adult. Though sentenced for the rest of her life to an insane asylum, Angel was released due to inside governmental pressure while being pronounced dead in order to avoid public outcry. Now Angel’s on the loose again, and a government agent is ordered to kill her in order to cover up the blunder.