asylum

Etymology

From Latin asylum, from Ancient Greek ἄσυλον (ásulon).

noun

1. A place of safety or refuge.
2. The protection, physical and legal, afforded by such a place (as, for example, for political refugees).
3. (dated) A place of protection or restraint for one or more classes of the disadvantaged, especially the mentally ill.
   Of all the queer collections of humans outside of a crazy asylum, it seemed to me this sanitarium was the cup winner. […] When you're well enough off so's you don't have to fret about anything but your heft or your diseases you begin to get queer, I suppose. 1913, Joseph C. Lincoln, chapter 5, in Mr. Pratt's Patients