Nellie Bly Insane Research Paper

Back in the middle 1880’s a reporter named Nellie Bly was asked to go undercover for the World to find out how the patients at Insane Asylum at Blackwell's island were being treated. How would she do this? Nellie Bly went on a journey of convincing other she was “insane” to have herself committed so she could see first hand what it was like to be a patient of the Insane Asylum. To prepare to be committed she practiced how she believed an “insane” person would act, wide eyed and confused. She slowly worked her way from a temporary home for women where she convinced them she was “crazy” to a courtroom where she was thought to be insane and taken to the Bellevue Hospital where she was pronounced “insane”, and finally to the Insane Asylum at Blackwell’s

According to Pirkis, Warwick Blood, Francis, and McCallum (2006) non-fictional media has a role in the negative way people see people with mental illness(p.523). With are large number of TV shows and movies portraying people with mental illness it is no surprise that the portyals take on set stereotypes. The most common is someone who is aggressive and dangerous to themselves and to others. Du Pré (2017) points out that while the media portrays individuals with mental illness as violent on 11% of mental health patients are actually violent which is almost the same as the amount of violent individuals in the overall population (p.279). Pirkis, Warwick Blood, Francis, and McCallum (2006) also pose the stereotype of “the female patient as seductress” and give the example of the film Dressed to Kill (1980), where the female patient that is mentally ill tries to seduce her psychiatrist (p.529). This is also seen in “Ten Days in a Mad-House” where Nellie Bly speaks of a patient named Sarah Fishbaum whose husband had sent her to Blackwell’s island because she had been after other men. The nurses would offer her men and tell her that the doctors wanted to be with her and that she should try to seduce them. This negative portrayal of people with mental illnesses leads to a negative connotation being associated with those with mental health issues leading to stigma. According to Du Pré (2017) stigma is defined as social rejection where the person in disrespected or ignored completely (p.162). Du Pré (2017) also mentions that people suffering from mental illness are judged harshly and tend to suffer reduced self-esteem due to taking the judgement very seriously (p.163). This stigma can lead to people with mental illness not seeking treatment or stopping treatment due to