Asylums Research Paper

With its view originating from the Old World, early Americans thought that the insane were cursed with unclean spirits. It was only during the Second Great Awakening that people, Christian activists, mostly women, sought to reform the prisons and asylums. For Americans, asylums are now remnants of the past; the mentally ill have been bestowed the right to live normal lives, and they are now even given the choice to decide if they wish to seek help and take medication. Even so, it is undeniable that people with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are unwillingly trapped inside a mind often not their own. Some of them, if left alone and uncared for, face dangers in society. Their irrational behaviors are frowned upon and physical violence may unintentionally

Although humanitarians continue to labor to bring quality community care to the severely mentally ill and believe strongly in guaranteeing them the same freedom as other American citizens, some of their efforts have delayed effective treatment and impeded the patients' safety. In many cases, morality is impossible for severely mentally ill to comprehend, thus forcibly medicating them would produce a more beneficial result for these patients.

One century prior, government mental institutions prevented harmful interactions between the mentally ill and the public through involuntary commitment and medication. Deinstitutionalization — the closing down these facilities and releasing of patients — moved many in dire need of care onto the streets. They desperately need these facilities back. Dr. Fuller E. Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, which works to eliminate barriers for mental illness treatment, concluded that “Extensive research on the history of deinstitutionalization by various individuals and organizations have shown an increase in jail population inversely related to the population of psychiatric institutions; as patients decreased, prisoners increase” (273).

The best solution would be regulated medication. Forced or unforced, it is more likely to decrease the probability of violence during unstable periods and also decrease the overall amount of hallucinatory episodes during psychosis. “Psychiatric diagnosis is largely an observational tool, not an extrapolative one… psychiatrists using clinical judgment are not much better than laypersons at predicting which individual patients will commit violent crimes and which will not” (Metzl, MacLeish). Both of these doctors from Vanderbilt University revealed the lack of empirical evidence needed to support a correlation between clinical diagnosis and any actual violence committed by a patient. Plus, when patients are trapped within psychotic episodes, they lose contact with reality and become unaware of what is socially acceptable; this further buries their near future into the unknown. Such state for patients with bipolar disorder, for example, occur when their mood swings between depression and mania. Due to random high arousal periods, it can only be increasingly difficult to predict the potential for violence one may have at any given time. However, medication for unstable patients would be beneficial in preventing danger to self (during depression) or others (during