A Crazy World: Untreated Mental Illness

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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.

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