Psychiatric treatments

Every day is the same to you; you wake up, read the paper, and drink your coffee. You work at the East Cambridge Prison, where you keep the inmates in order by whipping them, chaining them up, and by not giving them food. You know that the conditions are wrong and inhumane, but it’s a well-paying job. You don’t speak out because you’re worried about your family and three kids at home who need to be fed. Stories like these occurred in prisons and mental institutions all around the world. The…

During the Victorian Era, there was a change in the views towards mental illness as people began to realize the conditions and treatments towards patients of the mental institutions. Jane Eyre follows the story of a girl who is living through the social discriminations of the Victorian Era and observes the way the mentally ill were treated. In most cases, judging someone’s mental health was closely related to gender and where they stood on the social scale. Charlotte Bronte’s accurate yet…

Years later, I was a journalist in London when I was asked to report on a case about a criminal mental patient, Bryan, who was petitioning to get released. So I caught a train to Broadmoor – London’s premier mental institution for the criminally insane. I began to yawn uncontrollably on the way there, which apparently is what dogs do when anxious - they yawn uncontrollably. Once I arrived, the staff took me through gate after gate until, eventually, we got to the wellness center – the place…

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…

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 treatment. Due to the lack of treatment in uneducated communities, most of these people were incarcerated. They were being The issue of imprisonment of the mentally ill has not been solved to this day. Inmates who are mentally ill usually have been convicted of…

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…

The treatment of mental patients has greatly improved since the 1960s, but it still is not perfect. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a novel written by Ken Kesey and published in 1962. Chief Bromden, a schizophrenic patient in an insane asylum who pretends to be dumb and deaf to avoid confrontation, narrates what happens in the ward. When authority hating Randle McMurphy is committed to the ward, he notices the head nurse, Nurse Ratched, manipulates her patients to keep her authority, rather…

fascination with the mentally ill Dorothea took a teaching position at the East Cambridge Women’s prison where she was shocked to see the inhumane treatment of the women there. Not only were some many of the inmates mentally ill people who had committed no real crime housed alongside actual criminals, the women there were subjected to harsh, corrupt, inhumane treatment. Many of the women…

Deinstitutionalization refers to a process of relocating chronically mentally disabled populations from institutions to community-based treatment facilities. The idea of the deinstitutionalization reform was created to promote more effective and humane treatment for patients with mental illness via a shift from statewide institutions to more community-based treatment services. Deinstitutionalization first began in the 1950s with the closing and downsizing of multiple asylums, which was initiated…

illness was viewed as a criminal act rather than an involuntary affliction, until one woman’s persistence changed the world’s perception of mental health. Dorothea Dix was an author, teacher, and reformer renowned for her strides in the improvement of treatment for the mentally insane. In her early years, she indulged her passion for learning through a career in teaching and encouraged women to pursue an education. In her later years, the hints of rebellious activism from her youth manifested…