Mad Americ Bad Science, Bad Medicine, And The Enduring Mistreatment Of The Mentally Ill

Wright, D. (1997). Getting out of the asylum: understanding the confinement of the insane in the nineteenth century. Social History of Medicine, 10, 13

Whitaker argues that treatments for the mentally ill have not advanced or changed at all, they have simply been masked to be accepted by society. He approaches this circumstance by breaking apart the history of the mentally ill into different eras in which he focusses in on the leaders of these shifts in dealing with the mentally ill. Though the names of these leaders are important, a weakness of the book was his distracting use of names as chapters. The whole idea of using these names as describing the eras creates a sense of distraction that

In the book, Crazy, by Pete Earley, provides a detailed overview of the mental health system in the United States, as it presents a first hand narrative of Earley’s family journey through the system. The author’s major premise and arguments, in the book, is to highlight the history of mental health, navigation through the judicial system with mental illness, the bureaucracy and policies of hospitals, society views on human rights and client safety, and the impact on the individual, family, and community. The content suggests that human service workers and public health workers should extend their professional lens to advocate for change in the mental health system in the United States.

Also during that time period a common treatment for such disorders included a procedure known as trephining. This procedure included chipping a hole into the skull of the afflicted person. This procedure has endured through time and is still used today in a more refined way to treat medical problems like migraines and skull fractures. When dealing with mental afflictions, Ancient Egyptians recommended modern methods like engaging in recreational activities like dancing, and painting. In the past it has also been common to lock up in jails or dungeons individuals who were mentally ill and who acted out. In the 17th century drugs like laudanum, unguents, opium grains were used as sedatives to ease the torment that mentally ill individuals would endure. At certain points in time, the mentally ill were housed in monasteries up until asylums were created and used to hold these individuals.

During the 1700’s the jails were not only used to confine criminals, but they confined people with mental illness as well. People with mental illness were subjected to inhumane treatment, even when the individual was admitted

brain, or sending patients to institutions, doctor prescribed pills to try and treat mental conditions. In addition mental health patients were no longer being institutionalized due to the poor conditions in mental institutions (History of Mental Illness”)

From the 1930's to the 1960's, early attempts to combine the psychiatric goals of restoring mental health with new advances in medical science would produce tragic results for many of those who trusted modern psychiatry to provide comfort and healing. During this time, science, psychiatry, ambition, power, and politics came together to leave behind a controversial history of events that destroyed the trust and hope placed by many upon modern science and left behind a trail of scarred minds and ruined lives.

The 1950s saw several developments in medications such as antipsychotics. The term antipsychotic refers to medicines or drugs that are primarily needed to manage psychosis. They are usually used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, though they can be helpful for other mental health problems such as severe depression. In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, a patient called Chief Bromden, describes his surroundings after taking medication. He said, “The words come to me like water, it’s so thick. In fact it’s so much like water it floats me right up out of my chair and I don’t know which end is up for a while. Floating makes me a little sick to the stomach at first. I can’t see a thing. I never had it so thick it floated me like this.” (Kesey 133) The quote gives an accuate picure of how an antipsychotic would work. Chlorpromazine, the first anitpsychotic, was synthesized in 1950 by the French pharmacuetical company Rhône-Poulenc. It was followed by the creation of many other drugs with diverse chemical structures. In 1954, another

During the 1800s, treating individuals with psychological issues was a problematic and disturbing issue. Society didn’t understand mental illness very well, so the mentally ill individuals were sent to asylums primarily to get them off the streets. Patients in asylums were usually subjected to conditions that today we would consider horrific and inhumane due to the lack of knowledge on mental illnesses.

The two psychological interventions that were administered to McMurphy while in the mental institution were a lobotomy and shock therapy. A lobotomy is the removal of the portion from the frontal lobe of the brain. This procedure’s main goal is to eliminate aggressive or violent behavior. This invention took place in 1935 by Dr. Antonio Egas Moniz. However, by the late 1940s the realization those individuals undergoing lobotomy procedures took place without initiative became apparent. Although the methods of a lobotomy have changed the basic underlying idea of neurosurgery exists today in the form of “psychosurgery” (Encarta 2000). Shock Therapy uses electric current or drugs to control psychotic disorders. In 1933, Dr. Manfred Sakel used drugs and instituted insulin shock to control mainly Schizophrenia. In 1938, Drs. U. Cerletti and L. Bini used electroshock therapy to treat severe depression (i.e. manic depressive psychoses). Alternating current through the brain using parallel

At the point when the Asylums initially opened, there was little learning of the psychiatric conditions or how to treat them. Therefore, the neurotics were resisted the urge to panic and involved however much as could reasonably be expected. It took numerous years to start to comprehend and create psychiatric medications and the main treatment that was utilized all through the Asylum framework was the treatment of General Paralysis of the Insane, brought about by Syphilis, with Malaria tainted mosquitoes. This treatment was utilized through until the 1950 's the point at which another medication was produced. The following treatment that was produced was the Deep Insulin Therapy, where it was trusted that Schizophrenia was brought about by

If I were to provide a summary of these two chapters, it would concentrate on the disturbing theory of eugenics and the return to finding physical therapies at any cost.  Whitaker (2002) explains the eugenics movement was grounded on the belief that the insane carried a defect “germ plasma” that was being spread through the population rapidly.  Whitaker (2002) also explained that several individuals felt that in order to stop this from happening that the mentally ill should be segregated in asylums and involuntary sterilized. Many felt that these extreme measures were necessary to preserve the “intellectual” human race.  Whitaker (2002) also described the great lengths that several prominent figures went to in order to ensure the theory of

Reported surgeries didn’t have significant effects on curing the behavioral deficits and had some severe side-effects such as inertia, unresponsiveness, and decreased attention span. Therefore, many times the side effects ended up worse than the problem that psychosurgery proclaimed to cure. It also became known that there were many professionals who were unqualified to perform the procedure that were operating in unsterile environments. Thus, psychosurgeries became less popular and illegal in some place, while people criticized for only silencing symptoms rather than curing them. However, it continued as a treatment for psychosurgery until the introduction of chlorpromazine. Chlorpromazine was the first pharmacological therapy for insanity. The introduction of psychiatric drugs and the rejection of current psychosurgerical operation led to a downfall in

There is not a hypothesis for this article; the article covers the years of 1880 to roughly 1943 on psychiatrists trying to become more cost efficient through the means of policlinics, only to end up, a few decades later to start the practices of killing patients because they were viewed as a waste of time and money. However, after realizing that other doctors and citizens did not approve, they quickly changed their methods to a 2-year treatment before deeming a patient treatment resistance which ended in the patient’s death, all for the sake of scientific research.

The line between nineteenth-century psychology and fiction is almost nonexistent. Based upon the contemporary scientific, medical, and public discourses, the topic of mental illness was examined across all fields. The mutability of this term, mental illness, draws the question of what made it so changeable in the nineteenth century. It is the aim of this dissertation to show the treatment of social and medical discourse in Victorian literature by exploring Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) and Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886). Roger Smith’s essay on psychology in periodical literature was the main inspiration for this dissertation. His statement inspired this research to explore how the medical discourse sparked public debate. Although his focus is on the discourse of different sciences, his research also inspired this dissertation’s attempt to prove a connection between academic fields, specifically literature and science. Smith’s articulation of his research is presented in such a way that helps provide a beneficial understanding of the discourse of nineteenth-century England.