A small town in the 1950’s shadowed by an iconic mental asylum run by a doctor who lived in the past until his doctor son decides change must happen at all cost.

SYNOPSIS:

The Discarded, a one-hour television drama, brings to life the history of psychiatry, a stigma that most in the field are trying to bury as if it never existed. It has often been called “An Industry of Death’ due to its horrific past of torturous treatments, abuse of the patients on a daily basis, and most of the people that ever made it in never came out.

The series will investigate one of the largest debacles created by an American institution. Eugenics was the science of breeding out the “unfit” by castration or placing them in these asylums. This movement was funded by names such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, and President Roosevelt, which lead to one of the largest documented genocides in world history with Hitler’s adaptation of the U.S. Eugenics program. He was trained by Americans, which ultimately lead to Hitler’s “Death Camps” during World War II.

Our series begins with our main characters Dr. John Morell and his father, Theodore running South Eastern State Asylum, known by the locals as S.E.S. Theodore is the ultimate authority in the asylum and rules it with an iron fist. His staff is scared to speak to him unless necessary. They will purposefully avoid him at all costs.

John on the other hand is loved by the staff and is quite friendly to both the staff and the patients. He wants to change his field and focus on more new age techniques leaving the barbaric methods of the past behind. It is a constant tug of war between these two when it comes to treating patients.

In time John can’t take the verbal, physical, and mental abuse that Theodore exemplifies not only on the patients but John himself. With an offer from a patient he does what he thinks is right and has Theodore killed. This makes him the head of South Eastern State, but with one major drawback Theodore never leaves. Whether he is a figment of John’s imagination or a ghost he lives on to torment John.

Not long after John begins working at the asylum the federal government start to deinstitutionalization of the asylums. By ceasing funding to their institution John sees his dream of finding a cure for some mental conditions and medicines about to come to an end.

John decides to make a deal with the state to purchase the hospital. This requires John to sell his home, spend most of his inheritance and forces his family to move into the asylum. This wasn’t unusual for the times because most staff and doctors lived in apartment style rooms in the asylum.

John’s wife Diane does everything in her power to help make the transition to living in the asylum as smoothly as possible for both her husband and her two young boys. Being so close always means John is constantly on call and frequently is summoned to help at all hours of the night. This begins to blur the line between John’s professional life and his personal life as the close quarters between John and his staff leading to compromising positions including John’s affair with one of the asylum’s young nurses, Nancy.

Living at the SES is not an easy change for his wife and his kids. They are consistently subjected to being around people who have been demeaned unfit for society, even in the dead of night you can still hear the patients’ screams coming from the main building. The young boys just want to make friends but how much can you trust the people you meet out in the quad these are just some of the lessons they will learn the hard way. However not all the patients were violent and the kids find a few to play games with. John assures Diane the boys are safe with the first floor patients, but unfortunately their trust will lead them to be confronted and murdered by one of the asylums most dangerous patients.

Beyond John, his family and his staff, The Discarded is a look into the history of mental asylums and features a patient of the week type stories and their backgrounds that brought them to S.E.S. Ultimately John succumbs to his failing asylum, going bankrupt, and experimenting heavily into drugs he so long administered to his patients.