We had a similar "horror show" in MA. And I don't really doubt that these places might have been mismanaged, underfunded, and the patients abused.
But in the age of Fake News, and Leftwing propaganda, I think I have a suspicion that the Nervous Hospitals were portrayed in a very slanted light and might not have been quite as bad as people like Geraldo wanted us to believe.
Yeah, the Libs love for Mental hospitals started with Dorothy Dix and ended with RP McMurphy.
Letting the mad and the bad run around in public unsupervised is probably the ultimate expression of the liberal imperatives to deny reality and reject the most basic standards of behavior.