When it comes to mental illnesses people tend to assume the worst of the patients, what they don’t think about is the people who care for them. They don’t care what really goes on behind the walls of the facilities. The patients were treated like animals, and horrendous punishments were appointed whenever someone missbehaved. Instead of helping the patients with their mental health, the doctors and nurses were making the patients feel worse. Recovery was on the low percentage and thirty-eight percent of the patients in mental hospitals in the 1800s were reported dead. If we were to compare the time periods of 1600s-1800s and 2000s the differentiality would be beyond extremity. In the year “1752 the quakers in Philadelphia were the first in America to make an organized effort to care for the mentally ill” this effort of the quakers founded the idea of opening an actual institution for the mentally ill(Diseases of the Mind: Highlight). In 1856 the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane opened up. Before this the mentally ill were treated inhumane. In late 1600s Europe, the mentally ill were shackled to the walls of dungeons. They weren’t properly cared for, they weren’t given enough food, and were quite often left nude. Mentally ill people weren’t being treated properly. It wasn’t until the 1800s that patients were put in proper facilities, but even then the treatments that these people were forced through were ghastly. In 1800s United States, facilities opened up to help those who needed mental health treatment. The patients were given a room, a bed, clothes, and were allowed time outside in the sun if they behaved properly. In some facilities, patients were being humiliated as a way of therapy. They would be arranged for public... ... middle of paper ... ...y locked her up the way she felt was close to insanity(Ten Days in a Madhouse). Think about that, this woman didn't even have a real mental illness and these doctors treated her horribly, and caused her so much pain. Are these doctors not well trained to notice the difference between a real mental health patient and a fake one. The 1900s came with a new set of treatments and cause chaos in the psychiatric hospitals. The electroshock therapy was introduced in the 1950s, it was said that the reason for this was to control the brain waves and somehow help the patients recover much faster. The treatments had a constant cycle. Women were given the treatment on Mondays and Thursdays, and men on tuesdays and Fridays. The patients were woken up at the crack of dawn and were dragged “begging, pleading, crying, and resisting” to the treatment area(Quest for a Cure: Care).
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Show MoreThe 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.
The mentally ill was mistreated, beaten, thrown into unclean quarters, and even taken advantage of before the 1800's. They was viewed as helpless individuals. Society and the government viewed them as criminals and deemed them incurable. During the 1800's a pioneer named Dorothea Dix brought about a change dealing with the treatment of the mentally ill. She became the voice of them something they never had.
The 1930s was a tough time for all of the mentally ill people. They were not treated the way that they do now. The mentally ill were called names like satans child, or they were not expected or very frowned upon in many religions. So because of all of the people who were mentally ill they started to create asylums. With these asylums they could hold almost all of the mentally ill people during that time. All of the asylums were overcrowded and sometimes there would be around 1 million patients. WIth all of the people in these asylums the staff and doctors became very understaffed so the patients living within the asylums were not treated how they should have been. Then doctors had found ways that they thought could cure these mentally ill people, whether it would be cruel to them or not. The treatments ran from major brain surgery to taking baths for multiple days.
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Before Kirkbride's standardized methods for mental hospitals, those with mental illness suffered crude and inhuman treatment. Beginning in Colonial America society, people suffering from mental illness were referred to as lunatics. Colonists viewed lunatics as being possessed by the devil, and usually were removed from societ...
Throughout the Great Depression the mentally disabled were treated harshly and were almost constantly being harassed by society. The mentally ill were treated in this cruel manner because they were seen as the cause of some of society’s problems of that day in age. Also, society viewed them as less capable of human being. A physician of that time by the name of Alexis Carrel stated, “The mentally ill should be humanely and economically disposed of in small euthanistic institutions supplied with the proper gases” (Freeman; “Treatment of the…”). Not only did Alexis Carrel feel this way, but so did many other people of the United States way
The film gives a historical overview of how the mentally ill have been treated throughout history and chronicles the advancements and missteps the medical community has made along the way. Whittaker recounts the history of psychiatric treatment in America until 1950, he then moves on to describe the use of antipsychotic drugs to treat schizophrenia. He critically summarizes that it is doctors, rather than the patients, who have always calculated the evaluation of the merits of medical treatment, as the “mad” continue to be dismissed as unreliable witnesses. When in fact it is the patient being treated, and their subjective experience, that should be foremost in the evaluation. The film backs up this analysis with interviews of people, living viable lives in the town of Geel, Belgium. I would recommend this film to anyone interested in the history of medicine and specifically to those examining mental illness. It provides a balanced recounting of historical approaches to mental illness, along with success stories of the people of Geel, Belgium. And although I had to look away during the viewing of a lobotomy procedure, I give credit to the power of the visual impact the footage
The Challenges Of Nineteenth-Century Asylum Psychiatry In North Carolina." North Carolina Historical Review 86.1 (2009): 32-58. Academic Search Elite. Web. 22 Jan. 2014.
Up to the 1600s, people with psychotic disorders were sent off in "ships of fools", locked in cages, "flogged into reason", or killed. The care for the insane at this time was the responsibility of nuns and monks (Noll, xviii).
In present day America the way mental health is handled is very different from the treatment of mental health in the 1990’s. Today the mentally ill have effective medication and therapy. Back in the 1990’s treating mental health was very new. Unlike today before the 1900’s most of the mentally ill were in prisons. Around the 1950 the United States Government invested in making a safe haven for mentally ill patients where they could be protected and could be medically help. Sadly this took a turn for the worse. Mental hospitals soon became the quite opposite of what it was once hoped to be. The rise and fall of mental asylums changed mental health in America forever.
Scull, Andrew. “The Social History of Psychiatry in the Victorian Era.” In Madhouses, Mad-doctors and Madmen, edited by Andrew Scull, 5-35. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.
The main purpose of an insane asylum or mental hospital was to care for and provide treatment to the mentally ill. In the late 1800’s to early 1900’s this was not the case. Not only were the mentally ill forced to go into these institutions, but perfectly healthy people were admitted as well. Many of the perfectly healthy individuals, unfairly admitted, were women (Jean-Charles). These healthy women were placed in insane asylums simply because they were not an “obedient housewife and mother” (Jean-Charles). The divorce rates were very low during the late 1800’s partly because husbands could declare their wife as insane and abandon them in an insane asylum, instead of the taboo act of divorce (Jean-Charles). Though many of these women were in a healthy mental state going into these institutions, they soon lost their state of rationality (Jean-Charles). They became as insane as they were treated because of the harsh conditions in which they withstood. The victims in these institutions would
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
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
The 1960’s individuals’ with mental illness were supported or cared for in asylums ,by mostly untrained staff, which were at that time called keepers. (Boschma, 2003). During the 1960’s a report called the Ely Report was written. This report stated that there was ill treatment of patients,