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Asylums In The Early 1900s

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Whereas mental asylums in the 1870s focused on methodology, lunatic asylums in the early 1900s tackled the issue of sanitation and communicable diseases. Beginning in 1912, the Indian Government, under the influence of the Britain, passed the Indian Lunacy Act of 1912.14 This act specified guidelines for the management of mental asylums, including various procedures for admissions and standards of care.14 At this time, changes were also occurring structurally within the mental asylums in Britain.14 These changes were transforming the care of the mentally ill into a more professional setting.14 As a result, British India underwent similar transformations to the structure of their cells and the status of mental conditions. For instance, controlling …show more content…

The British tried to raise interest of mental hygiene by changing the landscape where mental patients were held.11 These changes were the start of understanding that “prevention and environmental hygiene had long been neglected.”11 Health services needed to be strengthened if the British wanted to have a functioning workforce in India. Similarly, they divided their attention to communicable diseases that were killing patients. In 1920, Major General Jennings wrote to the Secretary of Bombay that the “daily average sick was 580 as compared with 614 in the previous years.”8 In addition, he reported that “the chief causes of deaths at the several Mental Hospitals were Tuberculosis 17, Diarrhea 14, Anemia 9, Diseases of the Heart 13, Dysentery 10, and Pneumonia 11.”8 These records reveal important information about the conditions of mental asylums. First, Major General Jennings word choice implies that the term lunatic asylums has been changed to “Mental Hospitals.”8 The change in terminology symbolizes the idea that mental health does not imply that the individual is a lunatic. Rather, the term “hospital” shows a transition and acceptance of mental illness as a health problem. Individuals struggle with a variety of problems and the goal of the facility is not to confine or isolate these problems, but to help those in need of medical

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“To be committed to a state hospital, one must go before a panel of a judge, lawyer and two doctors” (P. 5) the author of the memoir writes. Sounding similar to a court hearing before an individual is found guilty or not to be admitted to prison. This is one example of how the memoir reading is similar to Thomas S. Szasz statement of mental illness facilities being a prison for the patients. Another example is hospitalization patients were required to have paid jobs in the facilities, similar to jobs requiring inmates to have in prison. In prison, imates are the force to fulfill orders of the guards or punishment will occur.

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Resisting the idea of being institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, Jamison writes, “Mostly, however, I was concerned that if it became public knowledge that I had been hospitalized, my clinical work and

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Shocked to see prisoners devoid of medical and moral treatment in damp, cold quarters, Dix vowed to end the barbaric and revolting degradation. Very little of the population knew or cared about the mentally ill’s peril, and Dix’s crusade changed the way the mentally ill were received. Dix not only shed light on the nation’s most perplexing problem, she fearlessly shoved the issue squarely into the center of public policy, broadcasting the issue through her written account On Behalf of the Insane and Poor. Dix constructed 32 hospitals and 13 asylums throughout America and Europe (Reddi, 2005, para. 6). Most of these symbols of hope and progress are still standing today.

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Cold, stone, rigid walls. A gray blotch of “food” that no one can recognize. Persistent abuse from those who are supposed to aid the mentally disturbed. This is what Lennie Small’s life would have been like if George didn’t shoot him: constant suffering. That is exactly what George didn’t want for Lennie, so he shot him.

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The novel One Flew Over The cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey follows the experiences of Randle Patrick McMurphy who has pretended to be insane in order to a psychiatric hospital and escape from serving time in a prison work farm. The novel frequently refers to authorities that control individuals through restrained methods. The authority of the ward is most often personified in the character of “Nurse Ratched” or “Big Nurse”. The patients of the ward are afraid of Nurse Ratched that they fallow her orders without question. They “ long ago gave up the struggle to assert themselves.

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False Imprisonment of Sane One big flaw in the system for the insertions was determining if a person was really insane or not. They did not have the technology and the knowledge to really figure that out yet. Due to this many people that were completely sane were sentenced to these institutions. One huge example of this inability to sort sane from insane was Nellie Bly. Nellie Bly was a reporter at the time that snuck into an asylum in order to uncover the truths.

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Through the institutions, patients had less freedom, were forced to do activities, had no say in their treatments, and had to be helped with everyday tasks. The lifestyle in mental hospitals corresponded with American life in the 1950’s and early 1960’s because the mental hospitals encouraged conformity. Even though the Beat Generation’s ideals would have been seen as outrageous in the 1950’s and 1960’s, their beliefs rejected conformity and encouraged a new lifestyle for

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One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, took place in a mental hospital during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The narrator, Chief Bromden was a patient in a mental hospital for ten years. In the beginning of the book Chief was dominated by his fear of the Combine. The combine was “a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity.” (SparkNotes Editors)

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Before the eighteenth century, mental illness was thought to be a problem spiritually. Whenever people started acting weird ,they were thought to be wracked with sin or even possessed by demons (“The Asylum Movement”, 1997). One woman, Dorothea Dix, became a reformer for mentally ill patients. Dix was not alone, however. In addition, a woman named Nellie Bly, a journalist, also helped show the inhumane treatments of the mentally ill.

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Many of the “patients” were sent to the institutions for varying reasons that did not require medical attention. This increased the patient to doctor ratio, and slowed other patient’s chances of getting the medical attention they needed, even if it was not truly helping their illness. The term mentally ill is defined as “continued display of unsound judgements and actions that do not fit into society’s values” (Swart) and “according the the Weschler Adult Scale III, mental retardation is at an IQ of 70” (“A Step”). “The Institutions were overcrowded with people who couldn’t really get better” (Payne). “Many of the patients got in because they weren’t wanted, they had phobias or panic attacks, or they were looking for a home” (Mental).

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The prevalence of madness in twentieth-century literature paralleled the scientific and medical advancement of the underlying causes of insanity. At the height of this time period, people with mental diseases were admitted to state hospitals specializing in various psychiatric illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and dementia. Author Ken Kesey addressed this point in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a groundbreaking book discussing growth, an important human nature that comes in all sizes and shapes. In his book, the patients have different reasons for being in the hospital, but one of the patients, Chief Bromden, is there because of having schizophrenia, a condition which causes him to have difficulty distinguishing between the

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Another key pamphlet of the period on mental illness in the late eighteenth century is Andrew Harper, who followed on from Arnold’s work, he produced a ‘Treatise on the Real Cause and Cure of Insanity; in Which the Nature and Distinctions of this Disease Are Fully Explained and the Treatment Established on New Principles’ which was published in London in 1789. This pamphlet expresses the need for pre-tests before patient’s admittance to madhouses and asylums, to gain the correct diagnosis, in the hope the patient’s condition does not worsen under the caregiving of these institutes and that they are given the right course of treatment if possible. Harper comments in the pamphlet, ‘the custom of immediately consigning the unfortunate… to the cells of bedlam… is certainly big when ignorance and absurdity. At the same time, it destroys all the obligation of humanity, robs the sufferer of every advantage’ . He explained that doing this, would help to recover and cure the mentally ill patient in the quickest and best possible way.

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“I don’t think you fully understand the public my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way” (Kessey, 2,). All of the men in the ward are there because they were considered to have something wrong with them. Their inability to conform is considered insane, thus they are sent to the asylum. Because the men in the asylum were different, in their society they are looked down upon. “I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful” (Kessey ).

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Is the Madman Powerless? A critique of Szasz and Foucault ‘The doctor’s gaze’, as Michel Foucault famously coined it in The Birth of the Clinic, ‘is not faithful to truth, nor subject to it, without asserting, at the same time, a supreme mastery: the gaze that sees is a gaze that dominates’ (Foucault, 1963: 39). This medical imagery is powerful in delineating the power relationship between a respected, knowledgeable physician and a decrepit, mentally defected patient, more so when the physician, as Szasz wrote (Szasz, 1974: 268), imposes psychiatric treatment to the madman. Conscious that Foucault’s and Szasz’s concerns are reason enough why patient advocates movements gathered strength in the 1970s in the US, this paper will interrogate whether their assertions hold. In the following, I will redefine the term of ‘madness’ and with reference to varied notions and aspects of ‘power’ present a problematique of Foucault’s and Szasz’s implications that the madman

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”3 He made speeches in support of the Royal Hospital for Incurables in June 1856 and May 1857. In the speech in 1857, he pointed out the hospital’s poor facilities and appealed for more funds.4 He thought that physical environments in asylums were crucial to cure

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