Patch Adams : A Mental Hospital

Almond faced many long, cold nights as a traveling doctor in the mountains of West Virginia. He would travel lengthy routes to get to his patients in his little rag top jeep. There would even be times when he would have to get out of his jeep and walk, or row to the patients home. Dr. Almond would receive frantic calls from families in the middle of the night, and he’d spring out of bed to try to get there as fast as he could. Doctors who did house calls get little rest; they had worked all day and then got up in the middle of the night to go help a patient. “Just as one day has ended, another one has begun. And thus it goes, day in, day out, for many of our friends who earned the title “Doctor”, and all that word portends.”

When doing research I found that Benjamin Rush was the father of the American Psychiatry from 1745 to 1813. Rush claimed that “the cause of madness is seated primarily in the blood vessels of the brain” and that mental derangement occurs because the brain is “overcharged” with blood. Also, I researched that Rush had a “Negritude”. In 1797, Rush declared that blacks suffered from a disease called negritude. This he claimed derived from leprosy and caused the skin to be dark and that segregation would therefore prevent infection. He stated that the skin turning white, at which point the person would be considered sane, signified the only cure.

Monsters on the Inside: The Cause and Effects on the Insane Asylum According to the famous English designer, Robert Welch, “The whole country is one vast insane asylum and they’re letting the worst patients run the place.” Insane asylums in the 1920’s were ran by monsters but defined the patients as the monsters. Anyone who had a mental or physical disability was thrown into an insane asylum. In the 1920’s insane asylums were crucial, the hospitals had extreme rules, ghastly treatments, and horrific restraints.

Prominently featured in the mission statements of virtually of every medical school and medical institution in the world is the call for empathetic doctors. These institutions wish to train medical professionals that possess qualities of sympathy and compassion, and hospitals wish to employ health professionals that showcase similar qualities. The reality, however, is starkly different, as physicians, jaded by what they have seen in the medical world, lose the qualities that drove them to medicine in the first place. In Frank Huyler’s “The Blood of Strangers,” a collection of short stories from his time as a physician in the emergency room, Huyler uses the literary techniques of irony and imagery to depict the reality of the world of a medical professional. While Huyler provides several examples of both techniques in his accounts, moments from “A Difference of Opinion” and “The Secret” in particular stand out. Huyler uses irony and imagery in these two pieces to describe how medical professionals have lost their sense of compassion and empathy due to being jaded and desensitized by the awful incidents they have witnessed during their careers.

Laurell K. Hamilton spoke in great words that, “there are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.” Hamilton embodied a central state of mind of a person who is mentally ill. The wounds mentioned are those caused, and worsened, by traumatic events and public perception of a person with a mental illness. The women in the short stories that have been read embody an internal injury caused by an outward force. In “Story of an Hour”, “Rose for Emily”, and “Yellow Wallpaper” it is impactfully shown how traumatic life experiences can lead to and worsen mental illnesses.

Unlike Stanley, Mitch has learned to be sympathetic towards Blanche and her representation of femininity. Mitch however, still cultivates toxic masculinity when he does not bring correction to his friend, Stanley, when he sees him being openly abusive. He also allows Stanley to ruin his chances at happiness with Blanche.

Schizophrenia is a mental ailment in which the person inflicted is taunted by uncontrollable voices heard inside their heads and very vivid, realistic hallucinations. The voices and hallucinations can be benevolent, but they can also be violent. Many cases constitute of people being told by such voices to hurt themselves or others. People who suffer from Schizophrenia are often isolated from society and admitted into psychiatric wards and mental institutions for the majority of their lives. The general public does not understand the torment that these people go through on a day-to-day basis. In order to give readers insight into the mind of a schizophrenic, the poet Jim Stevens uses the depleting condition and turmoil taking place inside

Medical ethics could be considered a really broad spectrum that dictates the healthcare system. Defined as a system of moral principles that apply values and judgments to the practice of medicine. This however, can become quite tricky when deciding what is morally correct to one person to another. The movie Patch Adams deals firsthand with an aspect of medical ethics. The movie displays Robin Williams as the main character, Patch Adams, as a medical student who believes treating patients with happiness is the best way to help them. (Patch Adams, Tom Shadyac)

"Schizophrenia" by Jim Stevens is a poem depicting the way a schizophrenic person 's brain works. In the first line of the poem Jim Stevens says "It was the house that suffered the most". Although he is using the visualization of a house, I believe that he is really just using imagery to portray a human. I believe that each stanza portrays a different symptom of Schizophrenia.

Sylvia Plath wrote a captivating novel following a young girl through her battle with mental illness. In her novel, Plath illustrated the extent of prejudice which society exhibited towards people with metal illness in the 1950's. Like Plath, Susanna Kaysen wrote about the effect of mental illness on the patient's lives. Kaysen also revealed how in the 1950's and 1960's, the unwillingness of society to come to terms with the prevalence of mental illness affected the girls diagnosed. Thus Plath and Kaysen brought to light the issues surrounding mental illness and society's negative views towards those who suffer from psychological issues.

Christopher Payne’s Asylum: Inside the Closed World of State Mental Hospitals, is the result of a seven-year survey of America 's vast and mostly abandoned mental institutions of the late 19th century (Payne & Sacks, 2009). Payne’s artistic eye captures images of numerous institutions throughout America and the abandonment that followed. Photographs which display an architectural perspective of 19th Century medicine and, as a by-product, the country’s early history of care for the mentally ill. The buildings he visited were obviously designed for a specific purpose, at a particular time, with a unique architecture to be displayed. Payne’s photographs in Asylum capture a period in the history of American healthcare. Palatial institutions proudly exemplifying the moral treatment of those impacted by mental health issues. Perhaps, Payne captured the images of buried streets, peeling paint from grand entryways, and of infrastructure now being reclaimed by nature, as a reflection of the state of mental health care today.

Mitch has a very courteous and gregarious perspective on life. He basically believes that everyone deserves a chance. When he first meets Blanche, he begins to fall in love with her but soon after Stanley reveals the true Blanche to Mitch, he feels betrayed. At that point, his perspective changed because, he begins to become a little more like Stanley. An example of this is when he finds out and comes to meet Blanche and tells her

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.

“Laugh my friend, for laughter ignites a fire within the pit of your belly and awakens your being.” Stella and Blake. The film Patch Adams directed by Tom Shady is a fact-based biography and comedy based on a physician named Hunter “Patch” Adams. The film was produced in 1998 in Asheville, North Carolina. Patch Adams is the main character who believed that doctors should incorporate happiness and laughter when taking care of sick patients. He believes happiness and laughter is the best medicine because joy is a gift from the holy spirit. This film is an eye opener to the audience, especially people who are studying to work in the medical field. After watching this film, the intended audience would agree that doctors who use Patch Adams theory, laughter is the best medicine for ill patients will provide a better health care system, and cause the patients to enjoy and have a better perception of life.

The doctor-patient relationship always has been and will remain an essential basis of care, in which high quality information is gathered and procedures are made as well as provided. This relationship is a critical foundation to medical ethics that all doctors should attempt to follow and live by. Patients must also have confidence in their physicians to trust the solutions and work around created to counter act certain illnesses and disease. Doctor-patient relationships can directly be observed in both the stories and poems of Dr. William Carlos Williams as well as in the clinical tales of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Both of these doctors have very similar and diverse relationships with multiple patients