Throughout time, there have been questions about why society is the way it is. It is no accident the way society turned out of the years. People will always try to design different ways to keep the peace in society. They tried by locking up the criminals in jails, but that wouldn't create an ideal society. There were still be the outcasts and unwanted people left for society to deal with daily. There were the disabled that weren't perfect and unable to be productive. The state and government tried to find a solution, and acted like "god" in a way. So society began to treat people they saw undesirable severely. This resulted in the state and government designed a location to house those unwanted people called an insane asylum. Therefore,
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It was determined by many the creation of asylums was to control society. It is "...concluded that the construction of these institutions was largely the result of a concentrated campaign of a medical elite for control of the mad, a campaign shrouded in the progressive veil of "lunacy reform" (Wright). Wright also wrote how asylums were a dumping ground used to house the unwanted. People who had lower I. Q.s are labeled within the 1845 Lunatic Act and Asylum Act labeled the insane not only as mentally ill but also people with lower I. Q.s often called "idiots and imbeciles" (Wright). 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. Patterson talks about the benefits of the experimenting when he writes, "was a major event in the history of psychiatry, demonstrating that organic or physical treatments could be of value for previously hopeless cases of "madness"" …show more content…
There was a lack of proper training of the staff. Dorothea Dix, who helped reform the insane asylums saw there was a lack of training. It is mentioned by Dix how it is not through the fault of all the workers the treatment the patients suffer, but it is the training they lack that has resulted in the inadequate treatment (Dix). A lot of the patients in the asylums died while there and nobody tried to find their next of kin. As the Willard Psychiatric Center was closing two workers, found in the attic suitcases of the former patients. These patients had no one to claim their belongs they died there nameless (Underwood). The asylums were overcrowded and this affected the treatment given. The treatment the patients living within asylums received was "reduced to the extremest states of degradation" and there was a sadness within the quality of their life (Dix). This resulted in overcrowding and calm patients turned insane. The mentally ill changed from calm people to violent when they were left in the asylum to fend for themselves. They would go from clean functioning people to unrecognizable filthy looks savages
It was determined by many the creation of asylums was to control society. It is "...concluded that the construction of these institutions was largely the result of a concentrated campaign of a medical elite for control of the mad, a campaign shrouded in the progressive veil of "lunacy reform" (Wright). Wright also wrote how asylums were a dumping ground used to house the unwanted. People who had lower I. Q.s are labeled within the 1845 Lunatic Act and Asylum Act labeled the insane not only as mentally ill but also people with lower I. Q.s often called "idiots and imbeciles" (Wright). 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. Patterson talks about the benefits of the experimenting when he writes, "was a major event in the history of psychiatry, demonstrating that organic or physical treatments could be of value for previously hopeless cases of "madness"" …show more content…
There was a lack of proper training of the staff. Dorothea Dix, who helped reform the insane asylums saw there was a lack of training. It is mentioned by Dix how it is not through the fault of all the workers the treatment the patients suffer, but it is the training they lack that has resulted in the inadequate treatment (Dix). A lot of the patients in the asylums died while there and nobody tried to find their next of kin. As the Willard Psychiatric Center was closing two workers, found in the attic suitcases of the former patients. These patients had no one to claim their belongs they died there nameless (Underwood). The asylums were overcrowded and this affected the treatment given. The treatment the patients living within asylums received was "reduced to the extremest states of degradation" and there was a sadness within the quality of their life (Dix). This resulted in overcrowding and calm patients turned insane. The mentally ill changed from calm people to violent when they were left in the asylum to fend for themselves. They would go from clean functioning people to unrecognizable filthy looks savages