Asylums In The 19th Century

Nosocomephobia is the complete rational fear of mental hospitals. The word “asylum” has gained a lot of negative connotation since its first conception. The connotation refers to horrid, vivid images of the mentally ill being strapped down to a table and experimented on. If almost any sane person were to go through the humiliating, straining, disgusting events a psychiatric patient goes through on a daily basis, they would feel as though they deserved to be classified as insane. Mental correctional facilities need a reform of their procedures for correcting the mentally ill. Asylums have a long, horrid history. Society is so afraid and discouraging the institute it has steered clear of using the word “asylum” at all due to its negative connotation. The first asylum dates back to 1330. It opened in London, England and had its first patient admitted in 1407. The …show more content…
Essentially, if one had a grudge with another they could simply claim they were mentally insane and the claimed victim would get sent off the asylum. Asylums have been infamous for unmoral, experimental procedures that had been practiced on their patients. Most patients were admitted for life, due to them dying from various methods of treatment. The procedures ranged anywhere from savage attempts of electroshock therapy methods, to carving chunks out of the brain. Patients often had zero privacy and were confined into tiny small cells that consisted of one bed, and one toilet. Some cells in the asylum did not let their captives see the light of day. The average patient would rarely ever see his or her own fellow patients.
A patient’s worst nightmare in an asylum was to be put in solitary confinement. It is a common saying around psychiatric wards that there is one fate worst than death; solitary confinement. Merriam-Webster 's Collegiate Dictionary: Eleventh Edition defines solitary confinement as “the isolation of a prisoner in a separate cell as a punishment”. If a patient were to be