Insane Asylums In The 1800s

One can find out if Insane Asylums helped or hurt mental illnesses through the patient’s illnesses, the practices, and the experienced outcomes. Ever since the first insane asylums in the 1800’s, a huge problem was how incredibly easy it was for someone to be deemed insane and admitted. Photograph Reasons for Admission (Reasons) lists laziness, mental excitement, novel reading, asthma, and grief as a few of many absurd reasons that an individual would be ruled mentally ill and then immediately placed into an asylum to be treated and hopefully cured. It seems as if anything someone did or anyway someone felt could be twisted into complete insanity in the 1800’s, before doctors and everyday people learned about medicine. Referring back to photograph, Reasons for Admission not only would one be titled ill if they did not practice a religion, but also if they were overly enthusiastic in participation of religion (Reasons). Despite the above listed unbelievable reasons of admissions, many genuine actions and feelings, listed even within the same photograph, for admission in the 1800’s. For example, photograph Reasons for Admission also has self-abuse, sexual abuse, and time of life are also listed. Self and sexual abuse could lead to depression, lack of trust, and severe anxiety, which would just continue to hurt the individual’s mental state. Many diseases such as dementia and Alzheimer’s are disease that come with age, like the listed reason time of life. It is proven by Psychiatrists Simon Hill and Richard Laugharne that as time went on insane asylums became to become a bit more practical. Hill and Laugharne have learned of a few more plausible conditions that would result in one admitting an insane asylum such as mania, dementia, and melancholia. Hill and Laugharne discovered these conditions were the causes of admission “by examining 511 admissions between 1870 and 1875 to this typical Victorian asylum.” DailyMail writer, Jessica Jerreat, also lists post-traumatic stress disorder as a reason for possible admission into an insane asylums. Jessica Jarreat said, “The effects of the civil war, and even office work, also appeared to have had its toll on West Virginian residents, with possible early cases of post-traumatic stress syndrome and nervous breakdowns appearing,” because post-traumatic stress disorder was not recognized as a disease until 1980. However, the documentation of the patient’s outbursts and actions have been reviewed by psychiatrists and what is documented is very similar to what is known about post-traumatic stress order today. In addition to the absurd causes of admissions, insane asylums also preformed many lucrative, invasive, and corrupt surgeries that were thought to treat mental illnesses, but in fact made them worse. …show more content…
Alex Wain, a curator for the website SoGoodSoBad, talking about the surgeries that are performed in insane asylums said, “Yet in an era where modern medicine was still developing, everything it seemed could be cured with a stint in the local mental asylum where you could potentially undergo all manner of nasty, untested, unregulated and invasive surgeries. In some institutions for the criminally insane, electro shock therapy use to be commonplace - a way of 'resetting ' / frying the human brain.” The main surgery here is Electro-Shock Therapy, which essentially just give the patient several electric pulses to the head, which, as Alex Wain said, they thought would shock and reset the brain. However, the outcome of this therapy was the frying of the brain thus rendering them either dead, brain dead, or in zombie-like mental state. Another popular surgery performed by doctors in asylums were lobotomies. Gene Zimmer, a writer for a website that researches psychiatric procedures, explained lobotomies as, “… a psychiatric practice …show more content…
Hill and Laugharne recorded all of an asylum’s patient’s medical records, and made a chart of the outcomes. According to Hill and Laugharne, the positive results were that, “57.5% of those diagnosed with Mania, dementia or melancholia were recovered and discharged in less than or at a year.” However, the negative results were that, “34% of patients died within the first year.” In conclusion, insane asylums were both horrible and fantastic. The outlook depends on what aspect one is judging from, if judging from modern medicine, then asylums were necessary for medicine to be as advanced as it is today. But, if judging from the treatment of the patients then the asylums appear to be horrific and