History Of Mental Hospital Institutionalization

Improved Essays
1.) Describe the history of mental hospitals and institutionalization. Be sure and discuss the contributions of Goffman and Rosenhan.
Mentally ill patients were sick, and people knew they needed a place to receive help and treatments, and so the creation of mental hospitals and institutionalization began. “The general thought was that mentally ill people belonged in institutions to receive appropriate treatment, and for their own safety and the safety of others” (Kornblum; Pg. 81). Society was afraid of the mentally ill, and they believed they should be put in a mental hospital. Soon, the need for mental hospitals grew rapidly. After a while, people began to wonder if the mental hospitals were even helping the ill or were they just being locked
…show more content…
Why did deinstitutionalization come about and what have been its major consequences?
The deinstitutionalization of mental patients was an important late-twentieth-century trend because society wanted the mentally ill to experience life and not be locked away forever. “Beginning in the mid- 1950s, large numbers of mental patients were deinstitutionalized, or realized from mental hospitals, based on the belief that psychiatric patients would have a higher quality of life it treated in their communities rather than in mental hospitals” (Kornblum; Pg. 84). Everyone deserves a chance to live life, and not be hidden from it. Mental ill patients were let go from hospitals in hopes of them gaining the ability to function in life. Unfortunately, some mentally ill patients were not able to handle day to day life. A majority of them often ended up on the streets, and barely received any care for
…show more content…
“In studying social problems related to mental illness, basic sociological perspectives can help clarify the relevant issues and explain some aspects of the origins of mental disorders” (Kornblum; Pg. 63). The interactionist perspective, conflict perspective, and functionalist perspective are the same because they are all perspectives of how mental illness affects society. In other words, these perspectives deal with how we interact with one and other. The interactionist perspective deals with how society defines “normal” and “deviant” behaviors. The conflict perspective deals with how mental illness may lead to deprivation and inequality in society. Lastly, the functionalist perspective deals with how mental illness causes a social problem due to inability to provide effective

Related Documents

  • 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
  • Superior Essays

    This has created new problems that have never happened before. In the late nineteenth century, Dorothea Dix and Reverend Louis Dwight had a campaign that got a lot of the mentally ill out of prison. Because of this campaign, there were mentally ill hospitals everywhere, and the numbers of confined people with mental illness sharply declined. However, there was a lot of abuse within mental institutions and a lot of involuntary imprisonment of people. When antipsychotic medications were established, it showed great promise; however, the drug was overused and this resulted in horrific treatment protocols.…

    • 1038 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In the article “Stigma of mental ill health is 'worse than the illness”, Jeremy Lawrence talks about how people who are mentally ill are becoming discriminated against by ordinary people and that not a lot of people are helping or paying close attention to these people who are in desperate need of help. The mentally ill people are stigmatized because their illness. This author claims that people are deviant due to their irrational behaviors in treating the mentally ill people without care or sensitivity. They are deviant because they are making the situation worse by comparing them to celebs, abusing them, and increasing the rate of the illness. Mentally people are being criticized and discriminated in a wrong way, which can…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    As a direct result of this policy of Deinstitutionalization, 487,000 mentally ill patients were released from institutions, leaving only about 72,000 asylum residents across the United States. This meant that roughly 9o% of the formerly secluded mentally ill patients were now living in a community setting, being integrated into functional society. Because many states closed their asylums permanently with non-federal governmental mandates,…

    • 1424 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Before the 19th century in the American society, criminals were executed, whipped, and held in dark cells. The insane wandered around the asylums and were not cared for properly. Reformers wanted to establish an official institution for the insane and criminals that was humane. They believed that reform and rehabilitation was possible in a controlled environment. As part of the humanitarian reforms sweeping through America, asylums and prisons were for criminals and the mentally ill.…

    • 704 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The treatment of mentally ill people has evolved over time as the medical community had increased its understanding of the underlying causes of the disabilities. Asylums, places that housed the mentally ill in the 19th century, used harsh, painful, and inhumane methods to treat their patients. These methods of treatment began to change after Dorothea Dix, a teacher and nurse in the Civil War, began visiting asylums and reporting it to the public what she had witnessed. Dorothea Dix studied these patients and the treatments used on them for nearly her whole life, then helped a movement along to help asylums be better. Her criticisms of the asylum system would begin to change public opinion which was leading to laws being enacted to reform the…

    • 1785 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Asylum Dbq

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages

    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.…

    • 1043 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The treatment of people with mental illnesses and handicaps has been a long lasting problem because of the misunderstandings of police, mental hospitals, and society. Many documentaries and movies have been made to show the lives lead in mental hospitals and institutions. News reports have talked about police shooting suspects who have been mentally ill. Most of these events could have been avoided if people could try and learn about mental illnesses, instead of hiding them away from the rest of the world. Just because they are physically or mentally different from the norm, society expects them to be maintained at an institution like dogs in a dog pound.…

    • 2391 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Health Care In The 1800s

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages

    History tells a story about a time that the hospital, LTC system and mental health were all connected to one another and were all serviced in the same manner. Well, maybe there wasn’t really a hospital, nursing home or asylum so to speak of but there were people who had conditions or were poor and could not take care of themselves which resulted in a need which brought life to the health care facilities and models of care that we recognize today. Early in American history, few people lived to be old, but for those who did, “old-age security” meant having children or property. The public welfare system of those times was fashioned after the English “poor Laws”. Early on, paupers were given cash payments referred to as “outdoor relief”.…

    • 772 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During this time period, mental illness was still looked down upon. In 1970’s President Nixon impounded funds for the National Institute of Mental Health. The problem of mental illness was being brought to light as a result of the lack of services for mentally ill people. The lack of services made mental illness more noticeable and left many unstable people homeless, which got the attention of the media. Although media coverage was present, people weren’t concerned with mental illness and many families treated it as a private matter and didn’t share if they or a loved one were suffering.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Our social safety net is poor despite all we spend on health care; this means that despite initiatives to keep those who are most vulnerable to poverty from falling below poverty level, it is hard to do so (Rachlis, 2005). Mentally ill patients are discriminated against in the workplace because they are seen as independent or unreliable. This makes it more difficult to find a steady source of income and avoid falling into poverty levels. Institutionalization may treat some patients but when these facilities close down and the patients are put back into the environment that made them ill, it does no good. This illustrates the “revolving door syndrome” in…

    • 2044 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    People with mental illnesses face policing with the lack of funding to help people in need. Liat Ben Moshe addresses this problem in her article, “Institution Yet to come.” Moshe discusses the ill treatment of people who have mental illness due to the lack of support they receive from medicine and law. The creation of prisons has created an environment where all public spaces that proved help mentally and physically to be reduced to mental hospitals. Mental hospitals do not have the same label as prisons but that’s what they ultimately are.…

    • 1394 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Prison Within the Mind Just within the years 2003 and 2015, the incarceration rates for the mentally ill have tremendously increased, that within a survey done on inmates it was found that “more than three times more seriously mentally ill persons in jails and prisons than in hospitals”,(Carroll). The percentage rate has enormously increased, yet the mental health treatments in prison have not changed in the last two decades, (Carroll). There is a need for change in such situations, as a result, that out of all the inmates with mental illnesses, 83% were denied access to proper treatment, (Jailing People With Mental Illnesses). With millions of people being incarcerated each year and as society becomes more exposed to mental illnesses, there…

    • 1027 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Improvements at the hospital could be seen and in the 19th century the tours for the wealthy where no longer allowed to take place. The patients had also begun to receive better care but mental illness still wasn’t fully understood. The patients where no longer allowed to be chained up and in 1790 the straightjacket was then introduced. The straightjacket is supposed to be used for understaffed asylums to control patients but was never intended to be worn for long periods of time as it could cause blood clots with limbs being restricted. In the first half of the 1900’s when mental illness got the names Catatonia, Schizophrenia, Melancholia and Bipolar…

    • 1257 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior 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