Have You Ever Woke Up In Asylum Analysis

Diagnosing an individual with a mental illness balances on a fine line between giving a life-long label and misdiagnosing. Mental illness is best viewed on a continuum allowing for a varying degree of severity. In the field, mental health professionals are faced with determining what signifies the appropriateness of diagnosing a mental illness. A professional’s judgment is impacted by their personal perceptions and observations, societies views and norms, and the patient’s history. The film, “How Mad Are You? A Search for Insanity” demonstrates the difficulties in distinguishing those who are mentally ill from those seen as healthy ( ). I will explore my reactions and thoughts regarding the participants’ experience as well as the mental health professionals. Additionally, I will share how this information is applicable to my future career in the field of social work.

Insane Asylums in the 1920-1930’s were disturbing places to live. Men and women were held in different wards, each ward had up to fifty patients (D’Antonio). Patients lived incredibly close to one another. Not one patient knew what

The question of what it means to be labelled ‘psychologically abnormal’ is examined closely in Rosenhans study of ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’. This study highlights the usefulness and consequences of being diagnostically labelled.

During my childhood, there was never a time I have been in a hospital. As a matter of fact, I was not even born in a hospital, but in my grandma’s house. I was always

Sanity is subjective. Every individual is insane to another; however it is the people who possess the greatest self-restraint that prosper in acting “normal”. This is achieved by thrusting the title of insanity onto others who may be unlike oneself, although in reality, are simply non-conforming, as opposed to insane. In Susanna Kaysen’s Girl, Interrupted, this fine line between sanity and insanity is explored to great lengths. Through the unveiling of Susanna’s past, the reasoning behind her commitment to McLean Hospital for the mentally ill, and varying definitions of the diagnosis that Susanna received, it is evident that social non-conformity is often confused with insanity.

During the 1800s, treating individuals with psychological issues was a problematic and disturbing issue. Society didn’t understand mental illness very well, so the mentally ill individuals were sent to asylums primarily to get them off the streets. Patients in asylums were usually subjected to conditions that today we would consider horrific and inhumane due to the lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

According to Lola Jones, once people try an extreme sport they love it. In the 12th paragraph of the article, the author talks about how people love wingsuit flying, although they are well aware of the risks that come along with it (Jones 12). After taking a risk by doing an extreme sport, many people find a passion for it. This shows that there is something extremely likeable about taking a risk. This proves that although taking a risk is initially scary, it is something many people actually enjoy. Not only do extreme sports provide a hobby, they also can help to calm you

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a novel by Ken Kesey, is the telling of the inner workings of a mental asylum told by the view of one of the patients. Bromden, the narrator who is seemingly deaf and mute, begins the story with warning the reader that he is not a reliable source before he dives into the past to tell of the mayhem that Randall McMurphy brings to the mental institute with his arrival. McMurphy takes the asylum by storm with his masculinity in a corporation ran by an effeminate woman, Big Nurse Ratched. The longer McMurphy stays, the more the patients become individuals rather than a part of the machine of the

Asylums of the 20th century were deplorable places created for insane people because of the ignorance of the medical community about helping or treating the mentally ill, the way the asylums were use to get the insane out of the way, and the sheer fact that the hospitals felt the need to withhold the information about what was going on inside the institutions from the public. Some Americans today may believe that in the last few decades we had treated our patients suffering with mental illness with dignity and respect. However, the conditions in which many of them lived and the treatment they received were worse than that of animals. Treatments of these patients were so inhumane that, in Athens, Ohio, an asylum nicknamed the Ridges, a female patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared from one of the active wards. Schilling went missing on December 1, 1978, and on January 12, 1979, her body was found on an abandoned top floor of ward N. 20. The ward had been used for sick, infectious patients, and had been abandoned for years. When searching for Schilling, employees had forgotten to search in ward N. 20. Eventually, when Schilling was found, a maintenance man discovered her body lying on the floor in front of a window. Her body had been laying there for several weeks unattended. According to Carolyn M. Zimmerman, Ünige A. Laskay, and Glen P. Jackson, her body was left laying for so long that it had begun to rot and had left a stain that can still be seen today. This

This thesis will bridge the gap between these two theories. It will also address the theoretical division in the historiography. The architecture of Kirkbride asylums suggests that there was a dual purpose in the creation of these massive, imposing buildings; they were created to treat the mentally ill, but the idealistic writings of superintendents of this period did not reflect the true reality of asylum life, and thus control played a large aspect in the building and workings of insane asylums in mid-nineteenth century America.

Wright, D. (1997). Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century. Social History of Medicine, 10, 13

The documentary film The Grim Sleeper contributes to our social class by providing examples of sociological problems. Which takes us into the path of Franklin’s life through the minds of his friends. Exhibiting the problems in their community which involve race, education, and environmental sacrifices. Not only that but, crack was a major part of everyone’s life in their small feeble town, that and the countless numbers of prostitutes who would do anything for money. The qualities of the film engender a more involving stand point in the eyes of the victims and civilians who live among Lonnie during the tragicial years.

I could probably have fun doing anything if I was with the right people and had a positive mindset or

Along his way out of the battlefield, the speaker is impeded by "sleepers" lying on the ground, either dead or caught-up in thoughts to notice him at all. It seems that the sleepers are not able to rest in peace, perhaps because their brutal deeds against their own kind haunt them, almost as if they are in purgatory. The speaker has a long conversation with an awakened sleeper who appears to be an enemy soldier the speaker killed the day before, and who later suggests:

You wake up in a room that you are a prisoner of. In this same room you are raised your entire life surrounded by individuals who tell you that you need to be just like them. If you leave the room you will be an outcast forever because leaving is forbidden. You must obey the policies of a man whom you do not know and is no longer living, but regardless you must believe in him and abide by his rules. This room’s called“ life” dominated by religion in a world constructed on social norms. This is what it is like for someone like Chuyia, who is too young to understand all of the rules and ways of religion because she wasn’t actually trained on religion to the extent that it’s accepted as the manner of life. This is until she lives at the