Mental Illnesses In The 1950s

In the 1950s mental illness wasn’t as big of a deal is it is now. There wasn’t as many treatment options or institutions with good conditions. Mental ill people had a hard time with discrimination to where they would be in poverty and/or homeless. Most people looked at them like they were freaks. They feared them, rejected them, and thought they were very violent and dangerous. That was only because they were different and people didn’t know how to react to something they didn’t understand. That’s understandable though, but it still doesn’t seem right to treat someone like that just because they have problems they can’t control and never wanted. Mental illnesses were treated, approached and look at differently in the 1950s than they are nowadays.

The 1950s were important in the search for organic causes and treatments for mental illness. After finding a medication for treating depression, medication was becoming the primary treatment for mental illness, but there’s also psychotherapy which can help with treating a mental illness. There are three factors that contribute in causing mental illnesses: Biological, Psychological, and Environmental. Biological factors deal with: Abnormal functioning nerve cell circuits or pathways; Genetics which experts say mental illnesses deal with abnormalities in many genes and not just one or a few, this is why they say a person inherits a susceptibility to an illness but not the actual illness.

The illnesses themselves occur due to interactions of many cells and other factors like stress, abuse, or a traumatic event that which can influence or trigger an illness that a person has inherited a susceptibility to; Infections in the brain; Brain defects or injuries; Prenatal damage; or Substance abuse and other factors like poor nutrition. Psychological factors deal with: Psychological trauma as a child such as emotional, physical, or sexual abuse; An important early loss, such as losing a parent; Neglect; or Poor ability to relate to others. And Environmental factors that deal with: Death or Divorce; A dysfunctional family life; Feelings of inadequacy or low self-esteem; Changing jobs or schools; Social or Cultural expectations; or Substance abuse by them or their parents. There are many types of mental illness, and the most common include: Anxiety disorders, Mood disorders, Psychotic disorders, Eating disorders, Impulse control and Addiction disorders, Personality disorders, Obsessive-compulsive disorder

(OCD), Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Cognitive disorders (Reasoning), and Schizophrenia.Then there’s less common types such as: Stress response syndrome or Adjustment disorders, Dissociative disorders, Factitious disorders, Sexual and Gender disorders, Somatic symptom disorders, Tic disorders, and Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). The treatments for mental illnesses like those were antipsychotic drugs and therapy. There are many different antipsychotic drugs that can treat mental illness, depending on the mental illness. A few different types are: Zoloft, Paxil, Lithium, Ativan, Xanax, Thorazine, and etc… Although medication doesn’t cure mental illnesses it does help control the symptoms which can enhance the effectiveness of psychotherapy.
People with mental illnesses didn’t get the best care at first, but then institutions became known.

The institutions were known as psychiatric hospitals rather than mental hospitals. Occupational therapists were employed there to help prepare patients for life and work outside the hospitals, short-term patients did better than long-term patients because they hadn’t been away from the rest of the world as long as the long-term patients had been. In the 1950s, people general feared and rejected people with mental illnesses. Mentally ill people were considered psychotic by most people. People believed that the mentally ill were violent and dangerous which is probably why they were feared. Parents of children who were mentally ill wanted to get involved so they started an organization for a Forum school, which was a school for the mentally ill children. Several factors were responsible for this organization: 1.Widespread of children with an IQ of below 50, 2.A lack of community services for retarded people, 3.Long waiting list for admission to institutions, 4.Parental dissatisfaction with the condition of many institutions, 5.Leaders believing mutual assistance could bring benefits for public relations, exchange of information, and political actions, and last 6.The assistance of a few key professionals. The Forum school was established in 1954 and is still active to this day. It was hard for the public to distinguish a mental illness from ordinary unhappiness and worry and

tended to only see extreme forms of behavior. I feel like it was approached this way because people didn’t know how to react, like this was a new thing to them. It was a good thing that parents were getting involved so the patients didn’t feel alone, like they didn’t have anyone who cared about them and could help them get better. In the 1950s, they didn’t understand mental illnesses and didn’t know what to do about it. There wasn’t as many treatments because of how much they didn’t understand mental illnesses. This is why they approached it the way they did.
Dealing with being diagnosed with a mental illness must have been hard. They say they would start thinking “Why Me?”, with a combination of: Relief, Hope, Fear, Shock/Denial, Shame, Confusion, Anger, Guilt, Grief, and Loss of control and hope. This is when they were first diagnosed and they don’t know how they’re supposed to feel and they have so many things running through their minds that they don’t know what to do. So then, themselves and their family members’’ start thinking “Is it my Fault?”, they start thinking it’s their fault they were diagnosed with the mental illness, like they have a flaw or weakness in them that caused it when that’s not true, but they think it is. They’re then told that there are many factors that can contribute to them getting a mental illness, that it’s not their fault or their family members fault. These factors include: Family history, Stressful events, Stressful life situations, Other health problems, The environment, and Your personality and your thinking style. Next they ask “Why did it take so long to get diagnosed?”, and the answer to that question is because it takes a long time for a mental illness to be diagnosed or because it took a while for them to realize something was wrong and get help. Then they starting asking questions like, “Why do I have different diagnoses?” or “What if I don’t agree with my diagnosis?”. Finally once they get past all the questions like, why me and is it my fault they can move on to better questions which are, “What now?” and “Where do I go from here?”. This is when they start being okay with the diagnosis and wants to know how it’s going to affect them, in what ways, and what they’re suppose to do now so that they can move forward. After they’re diagnosed they tend to face problems such as poverty, homelessness, and unemployment due to discrimination in the workplace and the benefits system. They end up being denied benefits, excluded from insurance cover and vulnerable to exploitation from credit card companies. This leads to them building up in debt and can make their symptoms worse with the constant stress they have to deal with because of all the discrimination against them for their mental illness. These problems they face can make them spiral back if they have started to recover so because of the discrimination against them, they have a greater chance of having to start all over again with their recovery. This can make them take a turn for the worst to where they might not be able to recover again. This shows that people with mental illness are some really strong people because I don’t know if I could handle it as well as a lot of them do. I can’t even imagine the pain and stress they have to deal with.
Doctors back then didn’t know as much about mental illnesses as they do now. There are more medications and treatments nowadays than there was back then. Mental illnesses are being better understood by not only doctors and professionals but also everybody. People aren’t no longer as scared as they were about something they now know more about. Those with mental illnesses are no longer as feared or rejected as they were. The public isn’t so harsh towards people with mental illnesses as before. And people with mental illnesses have a better chance at recovering because they aren’t discriminated against as much as they were before. There are more people wanting to help mentally ill people get better than there was of people who were rejecting them. Plus there are better conditions in institutions now so it doesn’t seem so bad or scary to go somewhere you’ve never been to get help from people you’ve never met. With the better treatments we now have people with mental illnesses having better chances of recovering faster. Back in the 1950s, they approached mental illnesses like it wasn’t a big deal or like it would just go away, but they do now. Instead of fearing or rejecting them; nowadays, people actually seem concerned about these people and their problems and want to help. And now they can see how there are more advances in science than there was back then to help with treatments for them. More, people seem to be getting help sense there’s more focus on mental illnesses than there was in the 1950s. There are also less mentally ill people in poverty or homelessness. Plus mentally ill people are recovering faster because they don’t have to worry about spiraling back or taking a turn for the worse sense there’s less discrimination than there was.
Mental illnesses were looked at differently back then than they are now due to advanced research, society’s thoughts on people who are different, and how people looked at and thought about them back then. People shouldn’t have treated mental illnesses and people with mental illnesses like they did. No one can imagine what they were going through or how they were feeling so why should they be treated like they don’t matter as much. I bet they all feel like freaks or ashamed because they didn’t ask to be this way so why make them feel worse than they probably already do. It doesn’t seem right to me, but I am glad that people are not like that as much now as they were. People are actually treating them like people, like they matter, and like they shouldn’t be defined by their mental illness. So you can see how different it was back then for people with mental illnesses than it is now. They’re seen for their personalities, positive attitudes and for how they’re pushing forward and not letting other people knock them down and tell them they can’t.