19th Century American Asylums

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 …show more content…
Various smaller, equally corrupt asylums surfaced across England during the 19th century, bringing with them morally dubious actions that were unknown to the public. During this time, there were no laws put in place for experienced psychiatric professionals, so the treatment of the insane was carried out by non licensed practitioners (“Mental Institutions”). This lead to uneducated treatment, and ultimately neglect because of the lack of knowledge on how to treat patients. To add, it was also a common practice to completely dehumanize and humiliate patients by putting violent ones on display like sideshow freaks for the public to look at for a fee, and gentler patients were put out on the streets to beg for charity (The History). The patients were used as profit for the institutions, and set them up for extreme dehumanization and humiliation, forcing the public to see the mentally ill as lesser than themselves. Also, these institutions were fairly simple to be admitted into. Symptoms of insanity could indisputably be fabricated with the thought that, “insanity literally inscribed itself upon the body of the sufferer, and that the face and head, in particular, could be read as a text of abnormality, or excess, or mania” (Insanity, Institutions, and Society, 235). This causes many mentally normal people to be admitted into the hospitals simply for not getting along with their families. Practitioners often times placed mentally well people within asylums entirely for the interest of profits. “All you had to do was pay your doctor enough money to write a certificate of lunacy, and hired thugs would kidnap your relative and whisk them away” (How to get Admitted...). The admittance process were entirely lax in the extreme and regulations exposing the greed and corruption that led to these admissions were wrongful and unfair. Unlicensed practitioners gave way to unjust treatment and morally wrong actions,