Asylums In The 19th Century

In the nineteenth century, women from church groups, created the first recorded homes for their elderly, “bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh” (FATE 2). During this time, the homes would only have a limited space and these home would have separate rooms, dividing the poor from the wealthier classes. The idea of charging fees to enter these home, did in fact, come from these women to have better citizens of good health receive the right care they needed. But during the nineteenth century, asylums were also being built for those of the mentally illed, to keep the public and the mentally ill patients safe from themselves. There were two different types of asylums being built, the highly known asylums were built only for the poor, as for the rich,

they had their own private asylum. For the private asylums, the patients there would have better treatment than those at the “poor” asylums due to the main reason these private asylums had better funding and the time to look after each patient carefully, while in the other asylums, they began to get crowded and the fundings were very low. A man by the name of Boris Sidis, changed the outlook on the mentally impaired.

Sidis went to Harvard University where he earned his PhD. Through Sidisi's psychological training, he argued that besides the nervous system being corrupted, it was all about the data of the mind. In 1910, Sidis had opened his own private asylum where he subconsciously believed in his treatment. Sidis main treatment did involve hydrotherapy, which is the treatment using water internally or externally, such as a pool, and electrical therapy, where electrical currents are passed through the patient's body by hooking the patients up to a special machine that would stimulate the brain and the nervous system. Sidis used hypnosis to allow himself to reach deep inside the patient's minds to reach their memories. For the public asylums their patients were usually involuntarily placed there, sometimes before their hospitalization, they would act in violent behaviors, hurting themselves, hurting others and sometimes they would end up killing themselves. For public asylums, there were dirty and overcrowded, the patients there were treated unkindly, usually the staff would use violence to detain some

patients. Mental treatment changed over the course of years, combining the electrotherapy, doctors would do autopsies on the deceased’s brains. With the private asylums were a better facility due to the patient's entry fee, plus a fifty dollar fee (now is around a thousand dollars) every week to pamper the residents. This allowed more time to be spent with the patients, plus the facilities were in better care, more colourful and some patients were allowed outside. These private asylums were considered a healthy living, this time periods nursing homes compare partially to asylums. New generation nursing homes, house both the physically and mentally disabled. Unlike the private asylums, today nursing homes do not use any type of harmful therapy to cure their patients. Instead, they have special classes for the mentally disabled to work on their memorization, hand functions, and being able to communicate in their own way. These patients are looked after carefully and the nurses never leave their side unless another nurse can take their place, unlike a public and private asylum where the doctors only checked on their patients every so often.
When the word mental illness pops into somebody’s mind, they think about a psychopath, a killer, and these are part of a mental illness or disorder, but a mental disorder is far from a psychopath.

The question to ask is, what is a disorder? First of a disorder is “a disruption of normal physical or mental functions; a disease or abnormal conditions” according to Google. A disorder affects a person’s mental and physical health. “The concept of mental disorder (like many other concepts in medicine and science) lacks a consistent operational definition that covers all situations” (DSM IV). A disorder appears when a person is distressed or a reaction that is not expected. Mental disorders can be inherited from family members who have the traits for specific disorders. To be diagnosed with a disorder, a mental health professional of either mental or behavioral. In studies of mental illness, neurotransmitters in the brain have been an idea that could link scientists to why mental illnesses exist. Scientists believe that if certain chemicals in the brain are not balanced it can cause parts of the brain to shut down or the connection to the parts of the brain are not working properly, it can cause detrimental harm to the host and can cause certain illnesses to occur. Some examples of a mental illness would be; depression, obsessive compulsion disorder, autism, alzheimer's, and

dementia.