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Essay on the history of mental illness in america
Essay on the history of mental illness in america
Solitary confinement effects essay
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A Crazy World: Untreated Mental Illness In 1887, The World reporter Nellie Bly convinced officials she was insane by acting disturbed, and detached. Bly was quickly committed to Bellevue Hospital’s psychiatric ward. Upon arriving, she was astounded by the conditions of the hospital and the treatment of the patients. She witnessed patients being beaten, harassed, forced into isolation, and subjected to ice-cold baths that were a precursor to the modern torture method of waterboarding. Stories of the terrible treatments and conditions of the patients lead to the deinstitutionalization of mental patients and their reintegration into society. The systems of therapy that were in place to ensure the medication and therapy of the patients have since deteriorated and lead to already over-crowded prisons being forced to shelter the insane spending taxpayer dollars without distributing the proper care that the mental patients need. However, the unstable people not detained in penitentiaries walk free, unmonitored and posing a threat to society. A sturdier system needs to be enacted to ensure the medication, therapy, and reintegration of deinstitutionalized mental patients (DeMain). When lobotomies were discovered, they were quickly proclaimed a cure-all and became a popular treatment of mental disorders. A lobotomy is a procedure where the nerve bundles connecting the frontal cortex to the thalamus are severed; the two basic kinds of lobotomies are called prefrontal lobotomies and trans-orbital lobotomies, (otherwise known as the ice-pick lobotomy.) In a prefrontal lobotomy, holes are drilled in the skull to access the brain after the patient was put under by anesthesia. This was considered brain surgery and was extremely risky. The tran... ... middle of paper ... ...na Republic (Phoenix, AZ). Sept. 5 2005: A1. SIRS IssuesResearcher. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. Marcotty, Josephine. "From Asylum to Hospital: A Century of Mental Illness." Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN). 09 May 1999: E1+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 22 Nov. 2013. Shapiro, Joseph. "WWII Pacifists Exposed Mental Ward Horrors." NPR. NPR, 30 Dec. 2009. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. "Shooting Reopens Stalled Debate over Access to Guns for Mentally Ill." Fox News. FOX News Network, 18 Sept. 2013. Web. 16 Nov. 2013. Staff, Mayo Clinic. "Definition." Mayo Clinic. Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research, 25 Oct. 2012. Web. 26 Nov. 2013. Tartakovsky, Margarita, M.S. "The Surprising History of the Lobotomy | World of Psychology." Psych Central.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 15 Nov. 2013. "Untreated Mental Illness an Imminent Danger?" CBSNews. CBS Interactive, 29 Sept. 2013. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.
Leupo, Kimberly. "The History of Mental Illness." The History of Mental Illness. N.p., n.d. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
During the 1960’s, America’s solution to the growing population of mentally ill citizens was to relocate these individuals into mental state institutions. While the thought of isolating mentally ill patients from the rest of society in order to focus on their treatment and rehabilitation sounded like a smart idea, the outcome only left patients more traumatized. These mental hospitals and state institutions were largely filled with corrupt, unknowledgeable, and abusive staff members in an unregulated environment. The story of Lucy Winer, a woman who personally endured these horrors during her time at Long Island’s Kings Park State Hospital, explores the terrific legacy of the mental state hospital system. Ultimately, Lucy’s documentary, Kings
The traditional approach to the care of the mentally ill during the last 200 years was custodial, rather than therapeutic. This approach to “Psychiatric Care Delivery System” was introduced in India from Britain . Mental hospitals were established in isolated areas, often on the outskirts with the object of segregating the patient as troublesome and dangerous to their neighbors. The overriding concern was to protect the citizens without regard for appropriate care and cure of the ailing patients. As a consequence of this objective of the mental hospitals, the quality of care in such hospitals had been very poor. The inmates were subjected to indignity and humiliation for an indefinite period, and once admitted never recovered, or rehabilitated back in their family, but doomed to the inevitable end. The stigma of mental illness thus prevailed.
In the Earley book, the author started to talk about the history of mental illness in prison. The mentally ill people were commonly kept in local jails, where they were treated worse than animals. State mental hospitals were typically overcrowded and underfunded. Doctors had very little oversight and often abused their authority. Dangerous experimental treatments were often tested on inmates.
One of the most famous forms of a cure during the 1930s was a surgery called Lobotomy. “Lobotomy, also known as leucotomy which mean cut/slice white in Greek, or its nickname of ice pick, is a neurosurgical operation that involves severing connection in the brain’s prefrontal lobe” according to Freeman. Lobotomy was performed by
Deinstitutionalization started off as something that may have seemed honorable and sensible to those in our society back in the 1900’s as it seems like it was started in the sole interest of those who were mentally ill. Some of the most common reasons as to why deinstitutionalization was started are because the government wanted to put to stop the unethical treatment of the mentally ill who were often packed int...
In the 1800’s people with mental illnesses were frowned upon and weren't treated like human beings. Mental illnesses were claimed to be “demonic possessions” people with mental illnesses were thrown into jail cells, chained to their beds,used for entertainment and even killed. Some were even slaves, they were starved and forced to work in cold or extremely hot weather with chains on their feet. Until 1851, the first state mental hospital was built and there was only one physician on staff responsible for the medical, moral and physical treatment of each inmate. Who had said "Violent hands shall never be laid on a patient, under any provocation.
“How Lobotomies Work.” HowStuffWorks. HowStuffWorks.com, 27 Oct. 2008. Web. 28 Mar. 2014.
In the 1840’s, the United States started to build public insane asylums instead of placing the insane in almshouses or jail. Before this, asylums were maintained mostly by religious factions whose main goal was to purify the patient (Hartford 1). By the 1870’s, the conditions of these public insane asylums were very unhealthy due to a lack of funding. The actions of Elizabeth J. Cochrane (pen name Nellie Bly), during her book “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” significantly heightened the conditions of these mental asylums during the late 1800s.
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
Torture, for weeks, for months, for years, but it is somehow plausible to consider it help. The sane being shoved into a psych ward, drugged, and forced with erroneous treatments, yet this is regarded as the panacea? Mental institutes do not solve everyone’s problems. Forced treatment on the resistive or illegitimate mentally ill exemplifies the need to regain civil rights for patients. The current laws applied to the topic remain not enough to withhold these patients’ civil rights. Also, patients bias court cases while influenced by prescribed drugs. The stories and results of these foul acts are tremendously horrifying. As Americans we are born with our civil rights therefore these persons deserve justice.
What comes to mind when you hear the words “insane asylum”? Do such terms as lunatic, crazy, scary, or even haunted come to mind? More than likely these are the terminology that most of us would use to describe our perception of insane asylums. However, those in history that had a heart’s desire to treat the mentally ill compassionately and humanely had a different viewpoint. Insane asylums were known for their horrendous treatment of the mentally ill, but the ultimate purpose in the reformation of insane asylums in the nineteenth century was to improve the treatment for the mentally ill by providing a humane and caring environment for them to reside.
The BBC documentary, Mental: A History of the Madhouse, delves into Britain’s mental asylums and explores not only the life of the patients in these asylums, but also explains some of the treatments used on such patients (from the early 1950s to the late 1990s). The attitudes held against mental illness and those afflicted by it during the time were those of good intentions, although the vast majority of treatments and aid being carried out against the patients were anything but “good”. In 1948, mental health began to be included in the NHS (National Health Service) as an actual medical condition, this helped to bring mental disabilities under the umbrella of equality with all other medical conditions; however, asylums not only housed people
A huge factor in the prevalence of mental health problems in United States prison and jail inmates is believed to be due to the policy of deinstitutionalization. Many of the mentally ill were treated in publicly funded hospitals up until the 1960’s. Due to budget cuts and underfunding of community mental health services we ...
Those with mental illness would live in the community with an array of services and be able to be free from the constraints of confinement. In the early 1960’s the United States began an initiative to reduce and close publicly-operated mental hospitals. This became known as deinstitutionalization. The goal of deinstitutionalization was to allow people suffering from mental illness to live more independently in the community with treatments provided through community health programs. Unfortunately, the federal government did not provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to meet the growing demand. States reduced their budgets for mental hospitals but failed to increase funding for on-going community-based mental health programs. As a result of deinstitutionalization hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released into the community without the proper resources they needed for their treatment. (Harcourt,