Ten Days In A Mad House Essay

In mental illness, we come upon many obstacles. The obstacles in both stories in “What She Left Behind” by Ellen Marie Wiseman and “Ten Days in a Mad House” by Nellie Bly, gave us an understanding about the history of mental illness. These impediments were lack of clarity over idiom, miscommunication and understanding. When questioned about history being told to contemplate stories by Bly and Wiseman, were out of the ordinary to any individual who is captivated in acquiring knowledge on history of mental illness, improvements and mistaken beliefs. In the story of Clara in “What She Left behind” tells a dreadful story of human lives disregarded and gives us a better understanding of psychosocial aspects of mental illness. Patients as Clara being in a state Asylum made her feel as …show more content…
Bly went undercover to investigate the immoral conditions of the asylum. Her records of the portraying patients showed suffering from many physical abuses at the hands the staff. Individuals of which were confined maliciously, there by family members or husbands. Many women were found to be restrained behind the doors of Blackwell's Island for the wrong reasons. They were handled inhumanely, given cold water baths and beds of stone floors with thin sheets in the middle of winter. Committed to the asylum, Bly faced the conditions directly. The nutrition consisted of unpleasant, spoiled food and dirty undrinkable water. The ‘dangerous’ patients were tied together with ropes. The patients were made to sit for most of the day on hard benches with the least protection from the cold. Waste was all around the eating areas and rats crawled all around the hospital. The nurses behaved repulsively and cruelly, telling the patients to shut up, and beating them if they did not. The bath water was ice-cold and buckets of it were poured over their