The staff and patients go about their daily business at Buenos Aires' José Borda Psychiatric Hospital on a summer day in 1985. A staff psychiatrist, Dr. Julio Denis (Lorenzo Quinteros) is surprised to hear that his ward for non-violent delusional cases has one patient too many. Denis finds him in the chapel playing the organ like a virtuoso. Summoning him (Hugo Soto) to his office, Denis finds the man's speech is measured and articulate as he explains his presence there as a result of an image being projected from light years away. He introduces himself as "Rantés" (an exotic sounding name in Argentina). Dr. Denis is convinced that Rantés is a fugitive hoping to hide from the law in the hospital. He lets the patient stay however, after seeing how his caring touch helps the other patients. The doctor is amused by his extraterrestrial claims and he suspects that the man is a genius using his talents as a charade.
Tim Doolan (Horovitz), a troubled youth from a broken home in Los Angeles, is sent to a private psychiatric hospital after an altercation with the police turns violent. In the hospital, he makes a connection with Dr. Charles Loftis (Sutherland), a man with issues of his own.
Optimistic psychiatrist Dr. Donovan MacLeod wants to prove his theory that mental patients can benefit from group therapy. His method of treatment, with no violence or punishment, is met with a great deal of resistance from his unyielding and self-righteous head nurse, Lucretia Terry, who believes in traditional methods such as strait-jackets and padded cells for treating the mentally ill.
The movie opens in a mental institution where a girl named Su-mi is being treated for shock and psychosis. She is questioned by a doctor who asks if she can speak about the day that led her to being admitted to the hospital.
Set in a private mental institution, Chestnut Lodge in Rockville, Maryland, the film tells of a trainee occupational therapist, a troubled ex-soldier named Vincent Bruce (Beatty), who becomes dangerously obsessed with seductive, artistic, schizophrenic patient Lilith Arthur (Seberg). Bruce makes progress helping Lilith emerge from seclusion and leave the institutional grounds for a day in the country, and accompanies her on other excursions in which she is alone with him. She attempts to seduce him, and eventually Bruce tells Lilith he is in love with her. Lilith also seduces an older female patient, and enchants a couple of young boys on one her outings. Bruce triggers the suicide of another patient (Fonda) out of jealousy over the patient's crush on Lilith. This brings up memories in Lilith of her brother's suicide, which she implies was due to an incestuous relationship which she initiated, and she goes on a destructive rampage in her room and winds up in a catatonic state. Bruce presents himself to his superiors for psychiatric help.
Jean Hansen, a Juilliard graduate, joins the staff of the Crawthorne State Mental Hospital and immediately clashes with the director, Dr. Matthew Clark, about his strict training methods. She becomes emotionally involved with 12-year-old Reuben Widdicombe (Bruce Ritchey), and is certain his attitude will improve if he is reunited with the divorced parents who abandoned him. She sends for Mrs. Widdicombe, who agrees with the doctor's opinion that it would be best if Reuben doesn't see her, but as she leaves the grounds, her son sees her and chases her car. Distraught, he runs away from the school.
Charles Plumpick (Bates) is a kilt-wearing Scottish soldier who is sent by his commanding officer to disarm a bomb placed in the town square by the retreating Germans.
En 1996, dans un hôpital psychiatrique situé en Ingouchie, près de la frontière avec la Tchétchénie, les patients se trouvent livrés à eux-mêmes lors de la première guerre. Tous les soirs, Janna et les autres malades regardent un train passer, féérique et illuminé. Cette jeune femme se rêve à bord de ce train avec le "fiancé" qu'elle s'est imaginé, le chanteur canadien Bryan Adams.
Un soir, le train ne passe pas et le lendemain, c'est le chaos. Le directeur de l'hôpital a disparu. Des combattants tchétchènes débarquent, puis les Russes contre-attaquent... Dans cette folie meurtrière, Janna est la seule à apporter un peu de douceur et de joie lorsqu'elle joue de l'accordéon.
The sequel picks up on Christmas Eve some years after the first one, with Ricky Caldwell, the 18-year-old brother of the first film's killer, is now being held in a mental hospital, awaiting trial for a series of murders that he committed. While being interviewed by the psychiatrist Dr. Henry Bloom, Ricky tells the story of the murders his brother Billy committed throughout a series of several flashbacks used footage from the original film, as well as some new shots inserted in the flashbacks to make Ricky appear in more of Billy's original story.
Un psychiatre (Eric Bana) s'intéresse au journal intime d'une patiente, Rosemary McNulty (Vanessa Redgrave), accusée d'avoir tué son enfant issu d'une relation illégitime avec un sympathisant anglais. Enfermée dans un hôpital psychiatrique, sur le point d'être démoli, depuis une cinquantaine d'années, elle est suivie psychologiquement par le psychiatre qui est engagé pour réévaluer son état. Il découvre son attachement pour la Bible et elle lui raconte tout ce qu'elle a vécu et pourquoi elle a passé sa vie dans cet hôpital…
At the end of her career the sculptor Camille Claudel seems to suffer with mental issues. She destroys more than once her own statues and utters repeatedly that her former lover Auguste Rodin intended to make her life miserable. Consequently her younger brother Paul sends her to an asylum in the outskirts of Avignon. Claudel tries to convince her doctor she is perfectly sane, while living among patients who obviously are not. She is desperate to see her brother again, hoping he might eventually support her plea.
Simon Cable wakes up in a hospital bed, confused and disoriented. He soon discovers from doctors that he has amnesia and is unable to remember the last two years of his life. Cable investigates what has happened to him and slowly pieces together his enigmatic past.
After brutally beating another teen with a baseball bat during a baseball game, Lyle Jensen, an impulsive and aggressive teen, is admitted to the juvenile psychiatric ward of a hospital along with other troubled teens: Tracy, Chad, Michael, Kenny, and Sara. Lyle is placed in a room with Kenny, a reticent 13-year-old, and form some semblance of a sibling relationship. Lyle has problems adjusting to the confinements of the institution and it is Dr. David Monroe's job to get them to talk in group therapy sessions.
As Francis (Friedrich Feher) sits on a bench with an older man who complains that spirits have driven him away from his family and home, a dazed woman named Jane (Lil Dagover) passes them. Francis explains she is his "fiancée" and that they have suffered a great ordeal. Most of the rest of the film is a flashback of Francis' story, which takes place in Holstenwall, a shadowy village of twisted buildings and spiraling streets. Francis and his friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), who are good-naturedly competing for Jane's affections, plan to visit the town fair. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) seeks a permit from the rude town clerk to present a spectacle at the fair, which features a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). The clerk mocks and berates Dr. Caligari, but ultimately approves the permit. That night, the clerk is found stabbed to death in his bed.
The film follows a man, Jack (Jesse Metcalfe), faking insanity in order to save his sister, Lily (Kiele Sanchez), who has been involuntarily institutionalized. The siblings soon find that the strange doctor at the asylum, Mr. Gianetti (Peter Stormare), has been testing an experimental compound, orphium, on the patients that seems to be turning them into flesh-eating zombies; Loomis (Kurt Caceres), another patient, spreads the infection. The two siblings band together with a terminally paranoid man, Dave (Kevin Sussman), and a helpful nurse, Nancy (Olivia Munn), in the hopes of finding a way out of the asylum. They are attacked by most of the prisoners and staff, who kill Nancy; while on the 4th floor, they encounter the doctor, who gives Dave an icepick lobotomy, incapacitating him; he attempts to get Jack too, but ends up being infected by Loomis. At the end of the film, as the two siblings are in a police car heading to the asylum to investigate, the officers (Mark Kelly & Sharon Schaffer) accidentally let the patients escape into the outside world. It ends with a panning shot, revealing the city below the asylum's hillside location.