American Psychiatric Association

asking “if I could come interview you to find out if you are a psychopath?" So I changed tactic. I emailed Albert Dunlap, an asset stripper from the 1990s. He would come into failing businesses and close down 30 percent of the workforce, just turn American towns into ghost towns. I emailed him and said, "I believe you may have a very special brain anomaly that makes you special, interesting, and fearless. Can I come and interview you about your special brain anomaly?" And he said, "Come on…

In the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest a loud and boisterous man by the name of Randall Patrick McMurphy in an attempt to cheat the system is committed to a mental institution. What he does not know is that once he is committed only the head nurse can let him leave. After McMurphy realizes this he confirms this causes one of the patients named Cheswick to commit suicide. Almost immediately after Cheswick’s suicide McMurphy begins to upset the established order of Nurse Ratched and over…

The news stories about those being mistreated in asylums are not as public or as rampant as they were fifty years ago either. Conditions in some asylums are still a violation of human rights. Many patients do not have beds due to a lack of funding. They also live in places with feces covering the walls and mice infestations. They are basically living in their own excrement along with other vermin. The people that were released from the asylums that were shut down did not have proper care or…

The Sane Doing Insane Things Have you ever wondered what it was like in a mental hospital? If you could, would you pose as a patient to get admitted? In 1970 a man by the name of David Rosenhan did exactly that. Rosenhan wanted to determine if psychiatrists could tell the “Sane” from “Insane” apart (Slater 63.) Rosenhan and eight of his cohorts observed how Psychiatrists treated them during their stay. He came to the conclusion that the psychiatrist could not distinguish the “Sane” from…

2. Treatments during institutionalization were considered to be cruel and unusual methods compared to modern day psychiatric treatments. They included trephination, bloodletting and purging, isolation and asylums, insulin coma therapy, metrazol therapy, and lobotomy (Hussung, 2016). Bloodletting and purging were seen as useful for mental illnesses because it was thought to let out impurities in the body that caused imbalances in the ill person's system. Isolation and asylums became popular in…

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…

The Rosenhan Study showed how psychiatric hospitals could not differentiate between actually sick, insane patients from patients who were faking the symptoms and completely sane. Many people have been suspicious of the pharmaceutical industry and believe they will lie and manipulate the public. There are select minorities that believe that many diseases could be cured, but the treatment has not been made public due to the damage it would do to the pharmaceutical industry. In Rosenhan’s study,…

The clubhouse model came about after the 1950’s deinstitutionalize movement. The deinstitutionalize movement consisted of many state mental hospitals closing, leaving many homeless and incarcerated. Thousands of people did not have access to medication as well as had no one to case manage their situations. The clubhouse model follows the model of the Fountain House in New York. The Fountain House is a place that became a type of safe haven to those whom were deinstitutionalized, giving them a…

It was not until the 1930s when Egas Moniz, a Portuguese doctor had theorized mental illnesses become apparent in the frontal lobe when there is a problem with neurons. When this information came to America, American neurologist Walter J. Freeman II modified the procedure ("Lobotomy"). American neurosurgeons were against the lobotomy, but Freeman managed to publicize only his success stories when it came preforming the surgery, which led to a wild popularity of the use of lobotomies. During the…

Awareness Week." NAMI and other organizations have continued to call attention to the plight of the homeless and incarcerated, many of whom suffer from a variety of diagnosable and treatable illnesses. Awareness of mental illness is growing. Millions of Americans receive health-care coverage for mental health and substance-abuse treatment. NAMI is not alone in the effort to spread the word about mental illness, there are more than fifteen thousand Internal Revenue Service registered nonprofit…