UNDATED -- A new book out this week looks back at the days of the mental institutions in Minnesota. The book titled "The Crusade For Forgotten Souls" is by Susan Bartlett Foote.

She says back in the 1940s there was no such thing as the nursing homes like we have today.

There were 15,000 people in these institutions.  About 30 percent of the admissions were what they called senile elderly.  There were no nursing homes, there was no place to put people show either couldn't be cared for at home, or the families were unable to care for them.

Bartlett Foote says the asylums were closed by the early 1960s, as state lawmakers started to pass mental health reform laws.

The book is published by the University of Minnesota Press.

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