Mental Health In The 1800s

Decent Essays
There has been drastic changes in the treatment of mental illness from the 1800’s up until the present day. Asylums were used to house people with mental health issues. Often the patients were neglected and lived in horrid conditions. During the 1800’s patients with mental illness were considered lunatics. Having a mental condition was seen as having moral weakness. People believed that mental health patients were evil and because of this they were removed from society. During the 1900’s treatment for mental health conditions changed. Mental health professionals realized it was more beneficial to the patient if they were in a home-like environment. Doctors wanted the patient to be a functional member of society. Before a patient

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    Lobotomy Research Paper

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Finora Rodriques September 18, 2014 Abnormal Psychology Week 2 Assignment Treatment for mental health has come a long way in the past couple of decades. In class, we talked about the history of community mental health and where the timeline began. Dating back all the way to the Enlightenment Period, one’s worth was determined solely by whether or not he or she was able to work. The people who were not able to work, or the mentally ill, were incarcerated.…

    • 927 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Overview of 19th/20th Century Asylums: After 1808, parliament approved public financed hospitals for the mentally ill public, and 20 were assembled. Following 1845 it got to be obligatory for areas to construct asylums, and a Lunacy Commission was set up to screen them . Before the centuries over there were upwards of 120 new lunacy hospitals in England and Wales, lodging more than 100,000 individuals . “Ground plan of Tone Vale Hospital, Bishops Lydeard” -Feb 1947 Sympathy toward the affliction from what was considered dysfunctional behaviour steadily expanded and was especially grasped in the social and political approach of the Victorian time. District asylums were the proposal of a House of Commons select advisory group, which had…

    • 686 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Most people who were mentally ill in hospitals were treated as prisoners. They were put in dungeons, chained, and beaten. Urbanization allowed for more institutions for the mentally ill but the conditions in which they live did not improve. They were still being treated as criminals and most did not have access to light or heat. In the early 1800’s, Dorothea Dix watched this mistreatment occur in Massachusetts and began to establish over 30 hospitals that focused on the treatment of the mentally ill.…

    • 316 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article “On Being Sane in Insane Places”, author D.L. Rosenhan recounts an experiment he conducted to test the consistency of psychiatric diagnoses. In this study, eight individuals were given the task of calling a psychiatric hospital and alledging that he or she had been hearing voices lately, specifically voices that were the same sex as the patient. No other differences in symptoms or history were made, besides minor altercations that would not influence diagnoseses, such as where the individual was employed. In the end, all were admitted into the different hospitals they called. Once inside the hospital, the patient did not continue to pretend to hear voices or possess any symptoms at all.…

    • 864 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “The Yellow Wallpaper”: Insanity in the 1800’s In life most individuals trust physicians to properly diagnose mental or physical health issues and trusting a physician is often done without hesitation. Historically, however physicians were not always right though and traditional treatment plans often caused more damage than healing. Addressing the harm treatment plans caused was dangerous and anyone who spoke negatively against physicians was looked down upon; however, the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” addresses the issues symbolically to bring attention to the negative effects of previous treatment plans during the late 1800’s to early 1900’s.…

    • 720 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Asylum Dbq

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Insane asylums was a way to weed out society to only be filled safe and healthy people. Anne Underwood writes, "As Penney sees it, significant improvements will come only when patients with mental problems are viewed not as dangerous misfits but as real people, with lives, careers, dreams -- and suitcases"(Underwood). The patients in the asylums were seen as people no one would miss and they needed to be away from a productive society. Rehabilitation sought for these patients was through experimenting new techniques.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Ethical treatment was a commodity of insight in the 1800’s. In the past, those who had mental conditions were naturally taken care of in harsh conducts. In the United States and Western Europe, doctors who treated the mentally insane began to promote better conduct for mental care. During the late nineteenth century, the confidence around moral conduct for mental health started to diminish. With the beginning of development in industry along with the rise of migration to the U.S., burdens were put on mental health asylums to disclose further business in terms of treatment.…

    • 410 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Nellie Bly Research Paper

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The mental health care system was corrupt by the caretakers treating the patients inhumanely and were thought of as not fit to be in society. “They weren't thought of as human, or worth considerate treatment at all. These institutions were just a convenient place to send people who could no longer be cared by their family or by the boarding houses and hospitals of the city. They were locked away so as not to disturb the happiness of the conscience of the “sane” (Winchester). People that often did not have severe mental problems were sent to these asylums because they were not thought of as normal.…

    • 718 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Initially, mental illness was not treated and people were secluded, but as time went by, new laws and policies were administered to advocate for their needs. In earlier years, mental illness was seen as “demonic possessions or religious punishment” () Families and churches were responsible for caring for people with mental illness due to the stigmas of mental illness. But in the 1700s, the first hospital was introduced in Williamsburg, Virginia (). It sounds like a shift towards benefitting people with mental illness, when in fact it was the opposite. They were built to seclude mentally ill people from the rest of the society and they were treated crudely.…

    • 288 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Antipsychotic medications was introduced in the 1960s which really helped the symptoms that they were having. They even discovered what kind of symptoms they were having to determine what was the illness that they were having. Then in 1963, Congress passed and John F. Kennedy signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act, which provided federal support and funding for community mental health centers (National Institute of Health, 2013). This allowed large asylums to be shut down and patients to be helped instead of being tortured and harmed for no apparent reason. The way the mentally ill was treated has came a long way since the 18th and19th…

    • 461 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The first public British psychiatric asylums began to surface in the early 17th century and their questionable treatment of patients continues to be the spark of controversy. In the beginning, large Victorian public asylums were advertised with curative treatments and benevolent therapies with a emphasis on humanity (Hand). With this assurance that Victorian people’s mentally ill family, friends, and peers would be receiving sufficient care, these institutions gained a considerable amount of clientele in the 18th century. Other than the substantiate claims given by the asylums, not much was known to the public about the condition of patients in the 18th and 19th century because of the secrecy in which the asylums were held. Nonetheless, over…

    • 933 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During the Victorian Era, there was a change in the views towards mental illness as people began to realize the conditions and treatments towards patients of the mental institutions. Jane Eyre follows the story of a girl who is living through the social discriminations of the Victorian Era and observes the way the mentally ill were treated. In most cases, judging someone’s mental health was closely related to gender and where they stood on the social scale. Charlotte Bronte’s accurate yet insensitive portrayal of how mental illness was viewed in the Victorian Era is shown through the depiction of the character Bertha Mason in the novel Jane Eyre. Victorian Era mental patients were first treated with ignorance and anger.…

    • 767 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Insanity of Insane Asylums Mental institutions have always had a taboo outlook of public opinion and are subject to tacky horror movie plots, scary stories, and fears among the public; but with good reason. Within the 1950’s and 1960’s the amount of admitted persons in mental institutions reached its peak at 560,000 patients. As we look to the so called “treatments” of the time they are borderline medieval torture-not even considering the absurd and outrageous facilities that the patients inhabited. Insane asylums, mental institutions, and mental hospitals are all ironic within themselves. An asylum is an institution to provide shelter and support to the mentally ill…

    • 637 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Dorothea Dix Philosophy

    • 1415 Words
    • 6 Pages

    By 1820, it had already been recognized that mental illness was illness, not sin or depravity, therefore, many institutions across the world had begun to free the mentally ill from excessive restraints and had also begun to establish the concept of humane treatment in institutions devoted to their care. Dix, however, perfected the idea and the new model of care became known as the moral treatment. The moral treatment consisted of removing mentally ill persons from a stressful environment and family conflicts and placing them under a rather benign but autocratic system of organized living. There were regular hours of habits, and the patients were kept occupied with crafts such as gardening and more. Everything was under the close supervision of a superintendent, a physician, and his word was law.…

    • 1415 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Historical perspectives of the treatment of mental health Angela Shaw PT 300 July 21st 2017 Harold Collins Abstract Before Philppe perspectives towards mental health varied based on cultural and personal beliefs. These cultural and personal beliefs can affect one who is experiencing a mental health crisis willingness to seek professional help or if willing, affects their ability to receive the correct treatment for whatever mental illness they may be dealing with. Communities diagnoses the mentally ill as being possessed, cursed by god or evil therefore, the treatment these individuals received were often times inhumane. Throughout their time, mental health advocates like Dr. Philippe Pinel, Dorothea Dix, and Clifford Beers brought dignity…

    • 463 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays