The Retreat, commonly known as the York Retreat, is a place in England for the treatment of people with mental health needs. Located in Lamel Hill in York, it operates as a not for profit charitable organisation.

Opened in 1796, it is famous for having pioneered the humane treatment and moral treatment that became a model for asylums around the world. Founded by William Tuke, it was originally run by and for Quakers but gradually became open to everyone. It inspired other progressive facilities such as the American Brattleboro Retreat, Hartford Retreat and Friends Hospital. The present day Retreat seeks to retain the essence of early moral treatment, while applying the principles to a modern healthcare setting.

The York Retreat developed from the English Quaker community both as a reaction against the harsh, inhumane treatment common to other asylums of that era, and as a model of Quaker therapeutic beliefs. A common belief at the time was that the mad were wild beasts. The recommended medical practices included debilitating purges, painful blistering, long-term immobilization by manacles, and sudden immersion in cold baths - all administered in regimes of fear, terror and brutality. But the Quakers maintained that the humanity and inner light of a person could never be extinguished. A specific trigger was the death in 1790 of a Quaker, Hannah Mills, a few weeks after she had been admitted to the York Asylum (now known as Bootham Park Hospital). The asylum had not let her friends or family visit her, and they became suspicious. Visiting afterwards to investigate the conditions, the Quakers found that the patients were treated worse than animals.

House (also known as House, M.D.) is an American television medical drama that originally ran on the Fox network from November 16, 2004, to May 21, 2012. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie), an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital (PPTH) in New Jersey. The show's premise originated with Paul Attanasio, while David Shore, who is credited as creator, was primarily responsible for the conception of the title character. The show's executive producers include Shore, Attanasio, Attanasio's business partner Katie Jacobs, and film director Bryan Singer. It was largely filmed in Century City.

Michael Savage (born Michael Alan Weiner; March 31, 1942) is a conservative American radio host, author, and political commentator. He is the host of The Savage Nation, a nationally syndicated talk show that airs throughout the United States on Talk Radio Network. The Savage Nation has an audience of 8 to 10 million listeners on 400 stations across the United States, making it the fourth most listened-to radio talk show in the country. He holds master's degrees from the University of Hawaii in medical botany and medical anthropology and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in nutritional ethnomedicine. As Michael Weiner, he has written books on herbal medicine and homeopathy. As Michael Savage, he has written four New York Times-bestselling political books.

Savage has summarized his political philosophy in three words: borders, language, and culture. Some, including Savage himself, have characterized his views as conservative nationalism, while critics have characterized them as "fostering extremism or hatred." He outspokenly opposes illegal immigration to the United States, supports the English-only movement and argues that liberalism and progressivism are degrading American culture. Although his radio delivery is usually characterized as confrontational and politically themed, some of his show involves ruminating on topics such as medicine, nutrition, music, literature, history, theology, philosophy, sports, culture, and personal anecdotes.

Benjamin Solomon "Ben" Carson, Sr., (born September 18, 1951) is an American neurosurgeon and the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States, by President George W. Bush in 2008.

Carson was born in Detroit, Michigan and was raised by his single mother, Sonya Carson. He struggled academically throughout elementary school, but started to excel in middle school and throughout high school. After graduating with honors from his high school, he attended Yale University, where he earned a degree in Psychology. He chose to go to Yale because in College Bowl, an old TV program, he saw Yale compete against and defeat many other colleges in knowledge, including Harvard. Carson wanted to participate in College Bowl, but the program was discontinued. From Yale, he attended University of Michigan Medical School.

Carson's eye-hand coordination and three-dimensional reasoning skills made him a gifted surgeon. After medical school he became a neurosurgery resident at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Starting off as an adult neurosurgeon Carson became more interested in pediatrics. With children he believed that "what you see is what you get, ... when they’re in pain they clearly show it with a frown on their face or when they are happy they show it by smiling brightly." Since then he has been the head of the pediatric neurosurgeon department.

Ingrid Rimland, Ed.D. (born May 22, 1936 in Halbstadt (Molotschna) in Ukraine) is a Ukrainian-born American author, child psychologist, activist and former social worker. She has written several novels loosely based upon her own experiences from growing up in a Mennonite community in Ukraine and as a refugee child during World War II. Her novel The Wanderers (1977), which won her the California Literature Medal Award for best fiction, tells the story of the plight of Mennonite women caught in the social upheavals of revolution and war.

Born into a Russian-German Mennonite community in Ukraine she grew up trilingual (German, Russian and Ukrainian) in the then-Soviet Union. Her family had been wealthy prior to the Russian revolution, but the community faced persecution under the communist regime due to their pacifist beliefs and heritage. In 1941, when she was five years old, her father was deported to a Siberian concentration camp by the Soviets and she never saw him again. Most of her family was exterminated by the Soviets. Fleeing the Red Army, she ended up in Germany with her mother in 1945. After several years as a refugee, they emigrated to an isolated Mennonite community in the rainforests of Paraguay in 1948, with the help of Dutch and American Mennonites. In Paraguay, Ingrid married and had children. She moved to Canada in 1960 and to the United States in 1967, becoming a US citizen. In the US, she obtained a doctorate in education in 1979 and worked as an educational psychologist in California public schools, specializing in special education and migrant education for children, and simultaneously running a private practice in child psychology.