Psychiatric Care In 1930s America

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.

In the 1840s, Dorothea Dix introduced the concept of humane treatment for individuals with mental illness. She advocated for better treatment and

In addition to the historical aspect, confusion about mental health is another reason leading to the perception of the mentally ill. The Surgeon General's Report on Mental Health, (1999), dispels any confusion by making detailed analogies and information. Mental health and mental illness are not opposites; they are like two points on a continuum. The value of mental health is

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

Furthermore, tremendous advances have been made in the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses in the recent decades. Nowadays, someone with a mental illness is treated with respect, just like every other person, because, in fact, everyone is equal. Society’s goals today are to treat and support the mentally ill individuals enough so they can live in

Attitudes toward the mentally ill started to change in the 60’s and 70’s from both the communities and professionals. The two began to recognize that the mentally ill had rights to live an independent life style like that of ordinary citizens. Before this, people with mental illness or developing disabilities had been institutionalized, giving strong medications, sedated and isolated from the rest of society. Living amongst the community, they receive their medication as well as interact with the general public. In addition, they also interact with security personnel and law enforcement officers, and all too frequently with unfortunate consequences. (Russell, 2012).

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”)

From the early 1830s the insane were moved to the new state-run institutions that specialized in treatment of the mentally ill. The roots of this practice reach back to the eighteenth century, both in Europe and America. In the early ages of the insane asylums, the mentally ill when placed in the hands doctors, might have been bleed or fed an obscene amount of purgatives or laxatives. Finally a new medical standard known as "moral treatment" took hold, thanks to the French physician and asylum-keeper Philippe Pinel (1745–1826), who claimed that “[His] new field of asylum medicine guaranteed all the mentally ill the right to humane treatment rather than neglect or abuse.” Moral treatment was an approach to mental sickness related to how people think and treat each other, which became visible in the 18th century and came into place for much of the 19th century, coming partly from mental health care and partly from religious or moral

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

While understanding of mental illness has increased since the 1950s, public opinion has only become worse. Another change since the 1950s, is the medication given to patients.

The treatments for these disorders were also often inhumane and cruel because some of these patients acted out due to not being in the right state of mind. During the 1920s there was no known effective medication for psychiatric patients and these were the early stages of publicly run psychiatric institutions/asylums. ”evidence abounds of inhumane treatments of the mentally ill throughout history. ”(Madeline R. Vann, MPH slide1/11)

The mentally ill were treated very inhumanly in the early insane asylums. Some of the

The treatments of the mentally disabled were extremely inhumane back in the early 1900s. No one really no sincerity for the mentally ill, and they were treated more like lab rats than actual people. And the “treatments” that they were given

Treatment and rehabilitation for the mentally ill has evolved substantially in comparison to the interventions and treatments that were used in the past. Treatment (or lack thereof) consisted of entirely different techniques than of those implemented today and diagnosing persons with mental illnesses was far more frequent in the past than what is seen in the present. Those who were considered mentally ill during the early to mid-1800s suffered some of the most inhumane and barbaric interventions known to man. According to Kelly Erin Ludovici, the causes of mental illness were blamed on a variety of different reasons, ranging from witchcraft and demonic possession to moral and spiritual failing. The punishments therefore handed down to those with a mental disorder consisted of being chained in basement cells, being stripped of all clothing, and being used as entertainment purposes to the public (Ludovici, 2010).

Although Lee Smith's novel deals with the 2000’s in part, today in 2017 mental health is much more commonly recognized by our population. People are more likely to seek treatment instead of self coping with it like Charlotte Perkins, or “walking it off” like Lee Smith’s father. As mentioned before Lee Smith provides a more modern intake on what it is like to deal with mental illness. You can see that at a young age she knew what it was like to have family members hospitalized because of their disorders, and even in the later stages of her life she had to experience raising a child with schizophrenia. Sadly Perkins was forced to deal with her illness differently because of societal views. Woman were deemed to be the ones who had mental illnesses, and during her time it seems that it was expected for time to just do away with whatever the issue was. Although there is still some stigma and stereotypes on mental illnesses, compared to before this topic is much more open for discussion, people seek help in therapy, and can properly medicate if need be. Times have changed and so has the course of action, only it has changed for the