The early years of psychiatric field have provided the media with material for horror stories for ages now. Starting with colonial America, where people chained their ‘disturbed’ relatives and neighbors to the metal poles or locked them in small rooms for their entire lives, and ending with asylums, where doctors and nurses indulged in cruel behavior toward the patients, experimenting with inhumane methods of subduing the insane with lobotomy and electroconvulsive therapy. But is this picture painted by the horror movies entirely accurate? During the colonial times, ‘distracted persons’ were a responsibility of their families. While it was somewhat common to lock or chain them up somewhere in the house, it was hardly due to the cruel nature
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That year the very first asylum of the colonies was opened in Williamsburg, Virginia. Before that, the mentally ill were mostly housed in almshouses where the insane started to be separated from other inhabitants from 1729. By the end of the century, the insane were also housed in the both of the two hospitals in the United States (Shorter, 15). Between 1840 and 1880, one Dorothea Dix visited several states in order to persuade the governors into providing better care for the mentally ill; mostly it involved opening more institutions in order to house less people in the same place. Before her contributions there were only thirteen asylums in the United States. After her travels there were 123, of she personally was a key factor in opening 32 of them (van Hartesveldt). Around the time of Dix’s success, a journalist with pseudonym Nellie Bly wrote a report on treatment of mentally ill people in one of the asylums of New York City. She spent a week in a psychiatric hospital pretending to be a patient there. She wrote a book exposing the derogatory treatment of all the patients in the hospital, negligent doctors and cramped spaces …show more content…
The Act called for the formation of the National Advisory Mental Health Council and National Institute of Mental Health, designed to help prevent, treat and research mental illness (Brian).
In 1948, American Psychological Association assigned several members to review and discuss regulation and standardization of psychiatric classification. Their efforts ultimately resulted in the first edition of DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in 1952. DSM is still used by psychiatrists and psychologists all over the country, though in the new , fifth edition of the year 2013 (Brian).
The fifties also mark the beginning of the race for the perfect anti-psychotic medication. Several rivaling pharmaceutical companies tried to compete, but eventually only one was able to create the drug. It was Rhône-Poulenc, a French pharmaceutical company. The drug itself, called chlorpromazine, wasn’t created specifically as an antipsychotic. It was sent to a military doctor Henri Laborit, who was able to use it for more successful surgeries on shocked soldiers. Later he noted that the drug produced some sort of disinterest in the patients and decided to administer the drug to a schizophrenic patient. The drug successfully influenced the mentally ill, rending the schizophrenics symptom-free. The drug quickly spread
That year the very first asylum of the colonies was opened in Williamsburg, Virginia. Before that, the mentally ill were mostly housed in almshouses where the insane started to be separated from other inhabitants from 1729. By the end of the century, the insane were also housed in the both of the two hospitals in the United States (Shorter, 15). Between 1840 and 1880, one Dorothea Dix visited several states in order to persuade the governors into providing better care for the mentally ill; mostly it involved opening more institutions in order to house less people in the same place. Before her contributions there were only thirteen asylums in the United States. After her travels there were 123, of she personally was a key factor in opening 32 of them (van Hartesveldt). Around the time of Dix’s success, a journalist with pseudonym Nellie Bly wrote a report on treatment of mentally ill people in one of the asylums of New York City. She spent a week in a psychiatric hospital pretending to be a patient there. She wrote a book exposing the derogatory treatment of all the patients in the hospital, negligent doctors and cramped spaces …show more content…
The Act called for the formation of the National Advisory Mental Health Council and National Institute of Mental Health, designed to help prevent, treat and research mental illness (Brian).
In 1948, American Psychological Association assigned several members to review and discuss regulation and standardization of psychiatric classification. Their efforts ultimately resulted in the first edition of DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, in 1952. DSM is still used by psychiatrists and psychologists all over the country, though in the new , fifth edition of the year 2013 (Brian).
The fifties also mark the beginning of the race for the perfect anti-psychotic medication. Several rivaling pharmaceutical companies tried to compete, but eventually only one was able to create the drug. It was Rhône-Poulenc, a French pharmaceutical company. The drug itself, called chlorpromazine, wasn’t created specifically as an antipsychotic. It was sent to a military doctor Henri Laborit, who was able to use it for more successful surgeries on shocked soldiers. Later he noted that the drug produced some sort of disinterest in the patients and decided to administer the drug to a schizophrenic patient. The drug successfully influenced the mentally ill, rending the schizophrenics symptom-free. The drug quickly spread