The Role Of Insanity In The 1830's

A Crime of Insanity is about a 26-year old psychology student names Ralph Tortorici. One day Ralph walked into his Greek History class at his State University of New York college campus in Albany, NY. When Ralph came to class, he had a hunting knife and a rifle hidden under his clothes. When he closed the door behind him, after entering his classroom, he told his class that he was taking them as hostages.

The tale One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey is full of insanity, manipulation, freedom and the lack of, power, and rebellion. It starts off in an Oregon psychiatric hospital with the main character “Chief” Bromden, a schizophrenic Indian man that pretends to be deaf and dumb so as to be ‘safely’ ignored, detailing th arrival of a new man.

The ambiguity of sanity or insanity is a prevalent theme in many literary works, from Shakespeare’s Hamlet to Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman. In a well-organized essay, discuss how Ken Kesey questions the definition of sanity in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Then discuss how this ambiguity contributes to the meaning of the work as a whole. Throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the story follows several patients in a mental asylum.

Asylums of the 20th century were deplorable places created for insane people because of the ignorance of the medical community about helping or treating the mentally ill, the way the asylums were use to get the insane out of the way, and the sheer fact that the hospitals felt the need to withhold the information about what was going on inside the institutions from the public. Some Americans today may believe that in the last few decades we had treated our patients suffering with mental illness with dignity and respect. However, the conditions in which many of them lived and the treatment they received were worse than that of animals. Treatments of these patients were so inhumane that, in Athens, Ohio, an asylum nicknamed the Ridges, a female patient named Margaret Schilling disappeared from one of the active wards. Schilling went missing on December 1, 1978, and on January 12, 1979, her body was found on an abandoned top floor of ward N. 20. The ward had been used for sick, infectious patients, and had been abandoned for years. When searching for Schilling, employees had forgotten to search in ward N. 20. Eventually, when Schilling was found, a maintenance man discovered her body lying on the floor in front of a window. Her body had been laying there for several weeks unattended. According to Carolyn M. Zimmerman, Ünige A. Laskay, and Glen P. Jackson, her body was left laying for so long that it had begun to rot and had left a stain that can still be seen today. This

Emotional sickness has been a mind boggling point since the development of its known presence. While the meaning of dysfunctional behavior has developed, and been re-imagined for quite a long time, it can be best marked as a mutable, or a regularly changing thought that for all intents and purposes changes the result for treatment. (DeYoung 259) In early developments, up until about the nineteenth century, having an emotional instability was rejected as a man being under an obscure stupor which could bring about those being secured away mental homes forever. The other more radical conclusion had a tendency to be individuals who were rationally unwell were controlled by some kind of wicked compel and the best way to evacuate this underhanded drive was by expulsion or conceivable murder. While human blunder and

Lauren Slater’s, On Being Sane in Insane Places, takes the reader on a journey showing how psychiatry has changed since the 1970’s. David Rosenhan’s experiment of whether psychiatrists could accurately diagnose mental stability was the catalyst for her own experiment. Her quest to see if Rosenhan’s experiment can be duplicated, clearly shows her mental stability is questionable. I believe the psychiatrists in her experiment may have accurately diagnosed her.

What is truly considered to be sane or insane can never be absolutely determined by any means, but Charlotte Perkins Gilman investigates, to the best of her abilities, who and what should be understood as sane or insane. In “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, any reader with any ability to interpret can see that this subject matter is discussed throughout the text. But which characters are really insane and what evidence is there to prove this? By using the author’s text and other credible outside sources, this paper will research the deep realms of the minds of the characters introduced in the short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper.” One of

The question of what it means to be labelled ‘psychologically abnormal’ is examined closely in Rosenhans study of ‘On Being Sane in Insane Places’. This study highlights the usefulness and consequences of being diagnostically labelled.

Holden Caulfield is an insane person in a sane world. What is insanity? Insanity is when you’re in a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behavior or social interaction. This state is mental illness. Insanity is when you do things in deranged or outrageous ways that could frighten people, or make people feel uncomfortable when around you. It’s when you do things out of the ordinary; yet feel as if they are ordinary. Insanity could come about when you’re depressed, or after a traumatic event, and sometimes even by keeping all your feelings bottled up inside of yourself. Sane people are sensible, reliable, well-adjusted and practice sound judgment. It’s behavior that is expected in a society. By these

The insanity defense is a very complex criminal defense plea. Over hundreds of years, the insanity defense has evolved. The correct term for the insanity defense in a criminal case will be “not guilty by reasons of insanity” (NGRI). Many people have used the insanity defense without success. When someone uses the NGRI defense it is argued that a mental illness took full effect leading to an individual to commit a criminal act. Many have tried to use such a defense, yet one after another they have failed. The insanity defense is one of the hardest, if not the hardest defense to use. Pleading insanity can be tricky. One cannot simply plead insanity and expect for it to work.

The purpose of the insanity defense is to protect the defendants that are found to be mentally ill. Although insanity may be difficult to prove, it gives the opportunity for others to prove that they are not mentally competent to understand the severe degree of their actions. An accused that is not mentally stable, is not able to stand trial like every other criminal. They have to find a different approach during their trial. They cannot think rationally, and they are not in contact with reality so therefore, they have the chance to use the plea. The defense is idea to those who actually have a mental disorder or have a history of dealing with a mental disorder.

Former U.S president Ronald Reagan was shot by a man named John Hinckley in the year 1981. The president along with many of his entourage survived the shooting despite the heavy infliction of internal and external injuries. The Hinckley case is a classic example of the 'not guilty by reason of insanity' case (NGRI). The criminal justice system under which all men and women are tried holds a concept called mens rea, a Latin phrase that means "state of mind". According to this concept, Hinckley committed his crime oblivious of the wrongfulness of his action. A mentally challenged person, including one with mental retardation, who cannot distinguish between right and wrong is protected and exempted by the court

In early American history, individuals with mental illnesses have been neglected and suffered inhuman treatments. Some were beaten, lobotomized, sterilized, restrained, in addition to other kinds of abuse. Mental illness was thought to be the cause of supernatural dreadful curse from the Gods or a demonic possession. Trepanning (the opening of the skull) is the earliest known treatment for individuals with mental illness. This practice was believed to release evil spirits (Kemp, 2007). Laws were passed giving power to take custody over the mentally ill including selling their possessions and properties and be imprisoned (Kofman, 2012). The first psychiatric hospital in the U.S. was the Pennsylvania Hospital where mentally ill patients were left in cold basements because they were considered not affected by cold or hot environments and restraint with iron shackles. They were put on display like zoo animals to the public for sell by the doctors (Kofmen, 2012). These individuals were punished and isolated and kept far out of the eyes of society, hidden as if they did not exist. They were either maintained by living with their families and considered a source of embarrassment or institutionalized

In criminal cases where an insanity defense is used, the defense must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was not responsible for his or her actions during a mental health breakdown. There are two forms of an insanity defense, cognitive and volitional. In order for an individual to meet the requirements for cognitive insanity it must be proven that the defendant had to be so impaired by a mental disease at the time of the act that they did not know the nature of what they were doing. If they are fully aware of their actions, one must prove that they didn’t know what they were doing was wrong. Volitional insanity, also known as irresistible impulse, states that the defendant is able to differentiate between right or wrong at the time, but suffered from a mental disease that made them unable to control themselves. Volitional insanity is common in crimes of vengeance, where very few states allow the use of this defense. The insanity defense should not be confused with incompetency. In incompetency cases, the individual is not able to understand the nature and consequences of the case, nor adequately able to help an attorney with his or her defense. The insanity defense reflects the approach that an individual who can’t acknowledge the consequences of their actions should not be punished for the crime. In most jurisdictions a professional is bought in to determine if the defendant was not able to differentiate between right or wrong at the time of the

Through the course of time, mental illnesses have always been in existence due to varying factors and causes. However, as time has passed, the perceptions and available treatments for mental illnesses have also changed as new technology was developed. By looking at the treatments and perceptions of mental illnesses in the early 20th century, we can learn how to properly treat and diagnose not only mental disorders but also other conditions as well as show us the importance of review boards and controlled clinical trials.