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History of mental illness in usa, essay
Mental illness treatment in 1950
Treatment of mental patients in 1950's America
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Recommended: History of mental illness in usa, essay
Mrs. Cuevas
English 1301
30th April 2018
Research Paper “Mental health needs a great deal of attention. It’s the final Taboo and it needs to be faced and dealt with”~ Adam Ant. In other words, this quote is trying to say that mental health or illness is not a game, it is a sickness that needs to be treated with patience and care. This can be done by someone like a doctor or an expert who have the characteristics to treat the mentally ill. Throughout the world, the mental insane are placed in jails or wonder around the streets not knowing who they are, or what to do. This is because, mental institutions or psychiatric asylums were shut down back in the 20th century between the years 1955 and 1994. However, there has been an argument stating
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".. asylums based on the true meaning of the word: places of sancuary and safety for vulnerable people" "..Not the dismal instituitions that were shuttered in the past.."(Room for Debate). In the article, Psychiatric institutions Are a Necessity it provides sufficient information in order to bring back thses instituitons. This artcle, will make you see that the mentall ill are not crimminals or animals, but people who suffer from an illness that requiers a cure and attention. In the article, Should the U.S. Bring Back Psychiatric Asylums, as assistant professor of medical ethics,health policy , and psychiatty states " that the care should be "designed in collaboration with the patient".Thsi is said because there is many patients who require a certian type of care, not the same traumatic care from the early 1970s.(Should the U.S. Bring Back PSychiatrc Asylums ) . However, in the article "History of Psychiatric Hospitals reads that today there is a small amount of private psychiatric hospitals that deliver care and treatment "through a web of services including crisis services, short-term ..." In addition, there are "services that range from twenty-four- hour assistant living environments to clinics and clinicians ... that offer..psycho-therapeutic treatments" (History of Psychiatric Hospitals). What this means is that now in today's world, we somewhat provide treatment in clinics and hospitals, however, we need more than that for those who still need more attention then the rest. "asylums...might be still needed for the most vulnerable individuals who need supportive living environments" For
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
In the book “The Mad Among Us-A History of the Care of American’s Mentally Ill,” the author Gerald Grob, tells a very detailed accounting of how our mental health system in the United States has struggled to understand and treat the mentally ill population. It covers the many different approaches that leaders in the field of mental health at the time used but reading it was like trying to read a food label. It is regurgitated in a manner that while all of the facts are there, it lacks any sense humanity. While this may be more of a comment on the author or the style of the author, it also is telling of the method in which much of the policy and practice has come to be. It is hard to put together without some sense of a story to support the action.
The 1930s was a tough time for all of the mentally ill people. They were not treated the way that they do now. The mentally ill were called names like satans child, or they were not expected or very frowned upon in many religions. So because of all of the people who were mentally ill they started to create asylums. With these asylums they could hold almost all of the mentally ill people during that time. All of the asylums were overcrowded and sometimes there would be around 1 million patients. WIth all of the people in these asylums the staff and doctors became very understaffed so the patients living within the asylums were not treated how they should have been. Then doctors had found ways that they thought could cure these mentally ill people, whether it would be cruel to them or not. The treatments ran from major brain surgery to taking baths for multiple days.
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
As medical advances are being made, it makes the treating of diseases easier and easier. Mental hospitals have changed the way the treat a patient’s illness considerably compared to the hospital described in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
" This improved the treatment of patients but the mentally ill that weren't in this asylum may have
In the 1950’s, it was common so see people with frightened, uneasy, rejecting, and even arrogant attitudes towards people with mental illnesses. They considered those who were mentally ill as psychotic, violent and frightening. In the today, people are more accepting and understanding when it comes to mental illness, but some people are still ignorant with their responses, just like back then. In the 1950’s mental health treatment was typically provided in large state hospitals and other intuitions. Back then, topics like mental health were kept hush hush; people much rather putting those who were mentally in away in a state facility where someone else could monitor them. Today, people are more understanding.
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
A lot of thoughts and observations come to mind while watching The New Asylums. This is a documentary about life in prison for people who have mental diseases, so some of the thoughts and observations are actually quite sad. Many of the prisoners shown in the documentary look sad and defeated, and they have a right to, because having a mental disease even in the real world is very hard. In prison, they are allowed to refuse their medication, although at least there are people who will try to help them. Still, it looks miserable, even more miserable than prison looks for people who aren't suffering from a disease like schizophrenia. Mental illness is often used as the punch line of a joke, but like most other punch lines, it isn't that funny because it offends and demeans a whole subgroup of people. Subgroups are actually what stick out the most and make up the previously mentioned thoughts and observations. While watching all of this sadness on the screen, it's hard not to notice that there are some trends. The documentary was filmed in an all-male prison, so trends in gender aren't shown by the movie, but even the casual observer will notice that most of the inmates who are interviewed or showcased are people of color. This could indicate one of two things: there is a higher number of people of color who are affected by mental disorders or there is a higher number of people of color who are persecuted and tried by the law, ending up in prisons such as the one in the movie. Studying criminology is important because those questions matter, not just to the ruling group of the legal system, but to the individuals affected by disease and persecution, to their families, and to their communities. Investigating an obvious trend helps ans...
The BBC documentary, Mental: A History of the Madhouse, delves into Britain’s mental asylums and explores not only the life of the patients in these asylums, but also explains some of the treatments used on such patients (from the early 1950s to the late 1990s). The attitudes held against mental illness and those afflicted by it during the time were those of good intentions, although the vast majority of treatments and aid being carried out against the patients were anything but “good”. In 1948, mental health began to be included in the NHS (National Health Service) as an actual medical condition, this helped to bring mental disabilities under the umbrella of equality with all other medical conditions; however, asylums not only housed people
For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.
Continuing budget cuts on mental health care create negative and detrimental impacts on society due to increased improper care for mentally ill, public violence, and overcrowding in jails and emergency rooms. Origins, of mental health as people know it today, began in 1908. The movement initiated was known as “mental hygiene”, which was defined as referring to all things preserving mental health, including maintaining harmonious relation with others, and to participate in constructive changes in one’s social and physical environment (Bertolote 1). As a result of the current spending cuts approaching mental health care, proper treatment has declined drastically. The expanse of improper care to mentally ill peoples has elevated harmful threats of heightened public violence to society.
In 1950s the construction of new psychiatric centres took place in order to treat people with mental disorders. Local authorities provided financial resources to sustain these establishments of psychiatry. Apparently those psychiatric centres were treating the patients in unappropriated ways and inhuman acts as well as demanding them to remain inside the psychiatric centres for the rest of
Mental hospitals shape people, there is no denying that. Put someone in and will they heal and thrive like Susanna Kaysen? Or will they fall victim to the cold hard system like Randy McMurphy? Both films One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Girl, Interrupted demonstrate society’s desire to label and push any unique person who does not fit traditional expectations as mentally unstable. Characters like Nurse Ratchet seem detached and uninterested in their patients throwing medications around that most likely ended up hurting their patients rather than helping them just to hold the ruse that they are trying. If medical professionals all acted solely on personal gain then there would be no need for them, mental illness should not be regarded differently from a broken leg, the patient’s well-being should always be the top priority.
Why is there a cloud of judgment and misunderstanding still surrounding the subject? People with a mental disorder or with a history of mental health issues are continually ostracized by society. This results in it being more difficult than it already is for the mentally ill to admit their symptoms to others and to seek treatment. To towards understanding mental illness is to finally lift the stigma, and to finally let sufferers feel safe and accepted within today’s society. There are many ways in which the mentally ill are degraded and shamed.