The Seed Of Madness Essay

Throughout the course of history, society has tried to explain and diagnose the abnormal behavior of individuals with mental illnesses. Originally, folklore and other concepts dating back to ancient times, influenced societies to define and label those individuals that expressed abnormal patterns of behavior as mad, insane and mentally ill (Henderson, 2009). Treatment and legal proceedings for such individuals often incorporated cruel and unusual punishments and in some cases even death. Over time, societal views on the available treatments and legal proceedings for the mentally ill have changed drastically. Legal defense for those with mental illnesses, known as the insanity defense became available as far back as King Henry III’s reign over England (Ahia, 2009). The insanity defense is often used interchangeably with: the insanity plea as well as the phrase “not guilty” by reason of insanity. The accepted use of the insanity plea by the defendant, an individual whom is accused of a crime, is determined by the mental health evaluations of the court’s legal standards and or by mental health professionals. The issue of mental illness and the insanity defense becomes controversial when those with mental illnesses commit heinous crimes and use the “not guilty” by reason of insanity defense. The public fears that the individuals are using a questionable and concerning defense to be pardoned for committing violent crimes and that those individuals who are found not guilty and

When it comes to mental illness, there is no denying that it is one of the most intractable problems in our day-to-day lives. About 500,000 mentally ill people are in jails or prisons in the United States, while 50,000 are treated in psychiatric hospitals. People often can’t help asking if jails or prisons are really the new asylums for those who are mentally ill? I used to think that it is hard to answer, but now I will not hesitate to say “No!” after watching the video “The New Asylums”.

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

Ten days in a madhouse is an experience of a woman who chooses to commit herself to an insane asylum. Nellie Bly decides to commit herself to an insane asylum in Blackwell Island to investigate the experiences which criminal inmates were considered to be insane are subjected to. The document is a first-hand experience of the author’s observation. Bly goes undercover to fix his insanity to be admitted into the asylum. The reason why he fakes insanity is to ensure that the author can document everything which is seen and experienced within the walls of the asylum that is built for the insane (Bly 24). This piece of literature is critical since it seeks to shed light on the ongoings of the asylum and provide sufficient information as a way of reducing the limited knowledge and addressing the speculation that surrounded the criminally insane. The observations are that a life of mistreatment of patients at the Blackwell asylum gives insight into the mental health care system. Notably, these investigations had a profound effect on the rights of women by providing information that enabled women to have a voice in society and to advocate for better conditions for the criminally insane. Although women’s rights have been on the forefront for quite some time, there is still much to be done to address women rights.

This book is comprised of nineteen chapters, 153 pages that are aimed at an audience of sociologists, and academicians in all areas of criminal justice administration. Its major themes are that of violence and disorganization as experienced by inmates in the 1980 New Mexico State Prison Riot and, in precise ways, it discusses the impact of such violence in the day-to-day experiences of those involved – the inmates and prison staff. This riot lasted only two days and more precisely, 36 hours, but the turmoil experienced by the inmates and prison staff during that time will last a lifetime. This book should alert prison officials of the need to run prison facilities in a humane way, but this book demonstrates almost the opposite.

In Bly’s time, mental illnesses were not taken seriously. Bly described the asylum she was admitted to as overcrowded, cold, and dirty (ch. 7). It defeated the purpose of trying to give extra attention to those in need. It was easy to get admitted into an institution, but nearly impossible to make it out because the treatment was not treatment.

Traditions typically can be described as noble and based on morality. There are many benefits to following and keeping traditions, and traditions generally survive through generations because they bring a community together and are a proud part of a community’s identity. Through time, traditions and cultural norms change as beliefs change, and sometimes they can stray away from their moral foundations and become dangerous. When this happens, younger, innocent generations are at danger of blindly adopting these toxic traditions.

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

Entering the taboo world of mental illness, stigmatized as the crazy and psychotic by decades of

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.

In today’s society, mental hospitals are still a potential solution for the mentally ill, but they are seeing a steady decline in incoming patients. Although there is still a need for the mentally ill to be admitted to mental institutions such as hospitals, the reality is that the heightened cost of treatment deters many potential patients. Instead, the mentally

Mark Twain said, “The way it is now, the asylums can hold the sane people but if we tried to shut up the insane we would run out of building materials.” Sometimes the world needs insane people because they are actually the genius’ in the world. However, society does not usually deal well with people who stand out from it. The most logical reaction for people who look or act different than the rest of the population is to outcast them and lock them up somewhere until they can function properly in society. In the novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey, the idea of what makes a person insane and sane is heavily debated.

satisfactory health care, and affiliation with a diverse group of people. Although research has gone far to understand the impact of the disease, it has only recently begun to explain stigma in mental illness.” Mr.Hyde was kept a secret because he was out of the parameters of “normal” for his community.

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

The Oxford dictionary defines madness as “The state of having a serious mental illness”. Madness has been construed in several different ways throughout centuries and literature. Before and during the Middle Ages madness was mostly seen as a suggestion of sorcery/witchcraft or demonic possession, or an imbalance of the humors- blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm, or as an effect of the moon (since it was believed that madness was caused as a result of sleeping in a place where the moon beams struck a person’s head and thereby the word lunacy was derived from the Latin word “luna” for moon). However, some considered the mentally ill to be divinely gifted, that is, being gifted with the power of speech/words (poets, writers, etc) and thereby the treatment and attitudes towards the mentally ill varied from exorcism, confinement, trephination (used for people who were thought to be possessed by demons and involved drilling a hole in the person’s head to drive evil spirits out of the body), whipping, etc. The sixteenth saw the establishment of asylums and hospitals which accommodated and confined the mentally ill, destitute and vagabonds, the jobless and the outlaws. All the unwanted people or the undesirables were shunned by the society and sent to these institutions. St. Mary of Bethlehem in London which was popularly known as Bedlam and the Hopital General of Paris were two well known institutions that housed the mentally ill during the sixteenth and seventeenth