Insane Asylums

Nellie Bly faked insanity and got into an asylum to journal in New York City. She wrote a book about her brutal experiences at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island called 10 Days in A Mad House. Nellie wanted to get herself checked into the asylum because she read about the horrible conditions of other asylums. Her main goal was to expose the asylum and get help for the mentally ill. Nellie wondered as she asked her editor “How will you get me out, after I once get in?” “I do not know.” he replied, “but we will get you out even if we have to tell who you are.” Nellie didn’t have much faith in her plan to deceive the insanity experts, although, the plan worked. Nellie reported from the mad house, extreme temperatures, abuse from the workers, and rotten food. Not to mention, they were forced to sit on a cold hard bench from 6 A.M until 8 P.M, and if they moved or talked, they would be beaten. Nellie states “ the asylum was in such

In early American history, individuals with mental illnesses have been neglected and suffered inhuman treatments. Some were beaten, lobotomized, sterilized, restrained, in addition to other kinds of abuse. Mental illness was thought to be the cause of supernatural dreadful curse from the Gods or a demonic possession. Trepanning (the opening of the skull) is the earliest known treatment for individuals with mental illness. This practice was believed to release evil spirits (Kemp, 2007). Laws were passed giving power to take custody over the mentally ill including selling their possessions and properties and be imprisoned (Kofman, 2012). The first psychiatric hospital in the U.S. was the Pennsylvania Hospital where mentally ill patients were left in cold basements because they were considered not affected by cold or hot environments and restraint with iron shackles. They were put on display like zoo animals to the public for sell by the doctors (Kofmen, 2012). These individuals were punished and isolated and kept far out of the eyes of society, hidden as if they did not exist. They were either maintained by living with their families and considered a source of embarrassment or institutionalized

Hippocrates was the first to recognize that mental illness was due to ‘disturbed physiology’ as opposed to ‘displeasure of the gods or evidence of demonic possession’. It was not until about one thousand years later that the first place designated for the mentally ill came to be in 15th century Spain. Before the 15th century, it was largely up to individual’s families to care for them. By the 17th century, society was ‘often housing them with handicapped people, vagrants, and delinquents. Those considered insane are increasingly treated inhumanely, often chained to walls and kept in dungeons’. There are great strides for the medical treatments for the mentally

The first colonists blamed mental illness on witchcraft and demonic possession. The mentally ill were often imprisoned or sent to poorhouses. If they didn’t go to one of those they were left untreated at their home. Conditions in the prisons were awful. In 1841, a lady named Dorothea Dix volunteered to teach a Sunday-school class for the female inmates. She was outraged with the conditions of the prisons that she witnessed. Dix then went on to be a renowned advocate for the mentally ill. She urged more humane treatment-based care than what was given to the mentally ill in the prisons. In 1847, she urged that the Illinois legislature to provide an appropriate

The dangerous and suicidal patients were tied together with ropes to help isolate them from the rest (ch. 14). The nurses were very obnoxious and abusive. For example, they would tell the patients to shut up and that they would beat them if they talked (Bly, ch. 12). Throughout Bly’s experience she talked with other patients, which convinced her that some were as sane as she was. Ultimately, society could not determine who was actually insane or sane due to their lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

A lot of thoughts and observations come to mind while watching The New Asylums. This is a documentary about life in prison for people who have mental diseases, so some of the thoughts and observations are actually quite sad. Many of the prisoners shown in the documentary look sad and defeated, and they have a right to, because having a mental disease even in the real world is very hard. In prison, they are allowed to refuse their medication, although at least there are people who will try to help them. Still, it looks miserable, even more miserable than prison looks for people who aren't suffering from a disease like schizophrenia. Mental illness is often used as the punch line of a joke, but like most other punch lines, it isn't that

brain, or sending patients to institutions, doctor prescribed pills to try and treat mental conditions. In addition mental health patients were no longer being institutionalized due to the poor conditions in mental institutions (History of Mental Illness”)

Part one spans over the years 1750-1900, and elaborates on the developments of varying treatments that were administered to mental patients during this time. Whitaker writes of methods like dunking the patients in water, bloodletting, the tranquilizer

The mentally ill were cared for at home by their families until the state recognized that it was a problem that was not going to go away. In response, the state built asylums. These asylums were horrendous; people were chained in basements and treated with cruelty. Though it was the asylums that were to blame for the inhumane treatment of the patients, it was perceived that the mentally ill were untamed crazy beasts that needed to be isolated and dealt with accordingly. In the opinion of the average citizen, the mentally ill only had themselves to blame (Surgeon General’s Report on Mental Health, 1999). Unfortunately, that view has haunted society and left a lasting impression on the minds of Americans. In the era of "moral treatment", that view was repetitively attempted to be altered. Asylums became "mental hospitals" in hope of driving away the stigma yet nothing really changed. They still were built for the untreatable chronic patients and due to the extensive stay and seemingly failed treatments of many of the patients, the rest of the society believed that once you went away, you were gone for good. Then the era of "mental hygiene" began late in the nineteenth century. This combined new concepts of public health, scientific medicine, and social awareness. Yet despite these advancements, another change had to be made. The era was called "community mental health" and

During the early to mid 20th century, not much was known about mental illnesses or what caused them, which was the way it had been for many years before. One of the somewhat common perceptions about mental illness was that these disorders were caused by possession or negative spirits. This can be most likely be attributed to the wide influence of the catholic church and the belief that exorcisms or psychosurgery could possibly cure incurable or intractable mental illnesses. Psychosurgery developed into the more common procedure known as a lobotomy, where the connections between the prefrontal lobe and the prefrontal cortex are cut with the intention of freeing the patient from delusions and side effects of other mental illnesses. Lobotomies began as a surgical procedure which needed to be performed in an operating room, as it required holes to be drilled through the scalp and into the skull. This meant that though the procedure was seen to show some

This one swung the mentally ill person around while he/she was in a harness. This treatment supposedly ‘calmed the nerves’.” (Gray). Needless to say the treatment of the insane was horrid and unbelievable. In the eighteenth century at Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, the public could pay a penny for a privilege to watch the “freaks”; they could poke the caged patients with a long stick (Taylor).

Unfortunately, asylum founders could only guess at the causes of insanity. Patient after patient was admitted into the state hospitals, but the cause of their disturbance was often a mystery. Many were inflicted with various organic diseases, like dementia, Huntington’s disease, brain tumors, and many were in the third stage of syphilis. With no treatments available, providing humane care was all that could be done. In the years following the civil war American cities boomed and the asylum began struggling to keep up. Soldiers, freed slaves, and immigrants were stranded in a strange land. The asylum became organized more like a factory or small town. There were upper and lower classman, bosses and workers, patients with nothing, and patients with privileges. Sarah Burrows, a schizophrenic and daughter of a wealthy doctor had a ten bedroom house that was built for her on the hospital grounds. Burrows home was just a stone’s throw away from the hospital’s west wing, where over sixty black women slept side by side. (Asylum: A History of the Mental Institution in America). The hospital began to rely on the free labor the patients provided. However, isolating the hospital from the community meant there was no way of knowing what was happening inside the asylum. The asylum became a world apart. In the 1870’s, Elizabeth Packard, a former patient of St. Elizabeth’s, wrote about her mistreatment and abuse

During the mid-1800’s the mentally ill were either homeless or locked in a cell under deplorable conditions. Introduction of asylums was a way to get the mentally ill better care and better- living conditions. Over a period of years, the admissions grew, but staff to take care of their needs did not. Asylums became overcrowded and treatments that were thought to cure, were basically medieval and unethical

The two psychological interventions that were administered to McMurphy while in the mental institution were a lobotomy and shock therapy. A lobotomy is the removal of the portion from the frontal lobe of the brain. This procedure’s main goal is to eliminate aggressive or violent behavior. This invention took place in 1935 by Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz. However, by the late 1940s the realization those individuals undergoing lobotomy procedures took place without initiative became apparent. Although the methods of a lobotomy have changed the basic underlying idea of neurosurgery exists today in the form of “psychosurgery” (Encarta 2000). Shock Therapy uses electric current or drugs to control psychotic disorders. In 1933, Dr. Manfred Sakel used drugs and instituted insulin shock to control mainly Schizophrenia. In 1938, Drs. U. Cerletti and L. Bini used electroshock therapy to treat severe depression (i.e. manic depressive psychoses). Alternating current through the brain using parallel

William Tuke, the Quaker asylum director, followed more of a traditional medical treatment. Quaker asylum was the first to band physical restraints and other types of cruelty treatments. Instead of captivating individuals to chains in dungeons, he gave them sunny rooms and space for activities.