Asylums In The Early 1900s

Institutionalization in the 1800’s was Dorothea Dix was a mover and shaker, who together with a few others in her era was responsible for alleviating the plight of the mentally ill. In the 1800's she found them in jails, almshouses and underneath bridges. She then began her major lobby with legislators and authority figures across the land, to get hospitals built in what was then known as the "Moral Treatment Era. " Things did get better, with ups and downs, of course. She visited widely, in the Midwest state hospitals in Independence and Mt. Pleasant, Iowa and Winnebago in Wisconsin ca.

In 1843, Dorothea Dix submitted one of her first memorials to the Massachusetts Legislature. Following her visit to East Cambridge Jail in 1841, the inadequacies in the treatment of the mentally ill Dix had witnessed were highlighted in this memorial; whilst there she saw how prostitutes, drunks and criminals were housed together in unsanitary, unfurnished and unheated quarters. During this period, the mentally ill were treated inhumanely and many believed there was no cure and that the mentally ill did not feel deprivation as “ordinary” people did. Nevertheless, due to the conditions Dix exposed herself to she was often criticised.

The novel One Flew Over The cuckoo’s nest by Ken Kesey follows the experiences of Randle Patrick McMurphy who has pretended to be insane in order to a psychiatric hospital and escape from serving time in a prison work farm. The novel frequently refers to authorities that control individuals through restrained methods. The authority of the ward is most often personified in the character of “Nurse Ratched” or “Big Nurse”. The patients of the ward are afraid of Nurse Ratched that they fallow her orders without question. They “ long ago gave up the struggle to assert themselves.

Resisting the idea of being institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital, Jamison writes, “Mostly, however, I was concerned that if it became public knowledge that I had been hospitalized, my clinical work and

“I don’t think you fully understand the public my friend; in this country, when something is out of order, then the quickest way to get it fixed is the best way” (Kessey, 2,). All of the men in the ward are there because they were considered to have something wrong with them. Their inability to conform is considered insane, thus they are sent to the asylum. Because the men in the asylum were different, in their society they are looked down upon. “I indulged in certain practices that our society regards as shameful” (Kessey ).

Cold, stone, rigid walls. A gray blotch of “food” that no one can recognize. Persistent abuse from those who are supposed to aid the mentally disturbed. This is what Lennie Small’s life would have been like if George didn’t shoot him: constant suffering. That is exactly what George didn’t want for Lennie, so he shot him.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, took place in a mental hospital during the late 1950s and early 1960s. The narrator, Chief Bromden was a patient in a mental hospital for ten years. In the beginning of the book Chief was dominated by his fear of the Combine. The combine was “a huge conglomeration that controls society and forces people into conformity.” (SparkNotes Editors)

Is the Madman Powerless? A critique of Szasz and Foucault ‘The doctor’s gaze’, as Michel Foucault famously coined it in The Birth of the Clinic, ‘is not faithful to truth, nor subject to it, without asserting, at the same time, a supreme mastery: the gaze that sees is a gaze that dominates’ (Foucault, 1963: 39). This medical imagery is powerful in delineating the power relationship between a respected, knowledgeable physician and a decrepit, mentally defected patient, more so when the physician, as Szasz wrote (Szasz, 1974: 268), imposes psychiatric treatment to the madman. Conscious that Foucault’s and Szasz’s concerns are reason enough why patient advocates movements gathered strength in the 1970s in the US, this paper will interrogate whether their assertions hold. In the following, I will redefine the term of ‘madness’ and with reference to varied notions and aspects of ‘power’ present a problematique of Foucault’s and Szasz’s implications that the madman

”3 He made speeches in support of the Royal Hospital for Incurables in June 1856 and May 1857. In the speech in 1857, he pointed out the hospital’s poor facilities and appealed for more funds.4 He thought that physical environments in asylums were crucial to cure

Through the institutions, patients had less freedom, were forced to do activities, had no say in their treatments, and had to be helped with everyday tasks. The lifestyle in mental hospitals corresponded with American life in the 1950’s and early 1960’s because the mental hospitals encouraged conformity. Even though the Beat Generation’s ideals would have been seen as outrageous in the 1950’s and 1960’s, their beliefs rejected conformity and encouraged a new lifestyle for

Introduction Prior to the mid-1960 virtually all mental health treatment was provided on an inpatient basis in hospitals and institutions. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was established with its primary focus on deinstitutionalizing mentally ill patients, and shutting down asylums in favor of community mental health centers. It was a major policy shift in mental health treatment that allowed patients to go home and live independently while receiving treatment, (Pollack & Feldman, 2003). As a result of the Act, there was a shift of mentally ill persons in custodial care in state institutions to an increase of the mentally ill receiving prosecutions in criminal courts.

Before the eighteenth century, mental illness was thought to be a problem spiritually. Whenever people started acting weird ,they were thought to be wracked with sin or even possessed by demons (“The Asylum Movement”, 1997). One woman, Dorothea Dix, became a reformer for mentally ill patients. Dix was not alone, however. In addition, a woman named Nellie Bly, a journalist, also helped show the inhumane treatments of the mentally ill.

The prevalence of madness in twentieth-century literature paralleled the scientific and medical advancement of the underlying causes of insanity. At the height of this time period, people with mental diseases were admitted to state hospitals specializing in various psychiatric illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and dementia. Author Ken Kesey addressed this point in his novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, a groundbreaking book discussing growth, an important human nature that comes in all sizes and shapes. In his book, the patients have different reasons for being in the hospital, but one of the patients, Chief Bromden, is there because of having schizophrenia, a condition which causes him to have difficulty distinguishing between the

In the book “One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest” Ken Kesey shows that the “insanity” of the patients is really just normal insecurities and their label as insane by society is immoral. This appears in the book concerning Billy Bibbits problem with his mom, Harding's problems with his wife, and that the patients are in the ward

Even of the patients are mentally disable and some cant express clearly, they still manage to form a strong social bond with the regular people. During the 1970’s President Kennedy passed a health reform act in which psychiatry was reevaluated, and insane asylums were shutting down. The given number 160,000 was lowest at the time as more asylums designed to isolate patients were converting to a therapeutic haling centers