Mental Hygiene and the End of the Asylum

Progressive Era reformers believed that mental illness was the product of environmental factors and that it was both preventable and progressively serious.  These beliefs gave rise to the Mental Hygiene Movement, which as characterized by the psychopathic hospital, child psychiatry and outpatient clinics.  All of these innovations were intended to prevent the emergence of mental illness or to provide early treatment designed to avert serious mental disorder. (Overview of Mental Health in New York and the Nation)

Treatment methods began to often include medications.  The person most responsible for changing the way medicine and society viewed the mentally ill was Sigmund Freud, who espoused psychoanalysis as a valid approach for the treatment of mental disorders. These techniques for treating the mentally ill were first introduced to the American medical community during the first decade of the 1900s.

Carl G. Jung, one of Freud's most prominent followers, was one of the first to employ psychoanalytic techniques with severely disturbed (psychotic) individuals, particularly schizophrenics. While Freud's techniques were readily adapted to “office practice, “ Jung's methods were useful with more severely disturbed, hospitalized patients.

In 1900 there were only 222 psychiatrists, but thanks to the work of Freud and Jung, mental illness in America began to transform. Psychiatry became a recognized medical specialty, and a requirement in most medical schools.

Thankfully, the days of the asylum, the only “therapeutic tool" of the 19th century, were numbered in 1909 and would soon disappear. (jzbick@tnonline.com, J. Z.)

Works Cited:

Overview of Mental Health in New York and the Nation. (n.d.). New York State Archives. Retrieved December 10, 2011, from http://www.archives.nysed.gov/a/research

jzbick@tnonline.com, J. Z. (n.d.). Treatment for the insane improved in the early 1900s | Times News Online. Times News Online. Retrieved December 9, 2011, from http://www.tnonline.com/2009/oct/16/treatment-insane-improved-early-1900s

Moral Treatment

Beginning in the late eighteenth century “moral treatment” had become the prevalent school of treatment in the United States. Replacing the model of demonic possession, “moral treatment” hypothesized that insanity was caused by brain damage from outward influences on the soft and fragile brain.  Removing patients to an appropriate environment where they could indulge in clean, healthy living, and would be offered exercise, work, education and religious instruction, was thought to facilitate their cure.  But the “moral treatment” method was riddled with problems.  As doctors and other hospital personnel grew frustrated by their lack of progress and a shortage of willing qualified staff, conditions often deteriorated.  Faced with overcrowded hospitals, and concerned about the rise of the spiritualist movement (which some attributed to the “moral treatment” method), many superintendents resorted to physical restraints.  By the middle part of the century, heredity also was considered a root cause of mental illness.  Many in the field believed that weak family and vices, like alcoholism and masturbation, could lead to madness.  The mentally ill were considered “genetically inferior” and eugenics and warped interpretations of Darwin’s theories suggested that mental illness could be eliminated through social engineering.  (American Experience)
 
However, there were many problems with how these understandings were applied into practice.  Hospitals and Mental Institutions were created to help “cure” the mentally ill, but several problems arose.

The expectation in the United States that hospitals for the mentally ill and humane treatment will cure the sick does not prove true. State mental hospitals become over-crowded and custodial care supersedes humane treatment. New York World reporter Nellie Bly poses as a mentally ill person to become an inmate at an asylum. Her reports from inside result in more funding to improve conditions.  (Asylums)

Check out Nellie Bly's reports here: (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/world/sfeature/memoir.html)

Works Cited:

Asylums, t. 1., true, s., sensational, s., oversight, a. i., & psychiatry., p. a. (n.d.). Untitled Document. McCarter Theatre. Retrieved December 12, 2011, from http://www.mccarter.org/education/mrs-packard/html/6.html American Experience | A Brilliant

American Experience | A Brilliant Madness | Timeline. (n.d.). PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Retrieved December 12, 2011, from http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/nash/timeline/index.html

Persons with Mental Illness

Values in our community affect the social welfare services of persons with mental illness in several different ways. First off, as with all other neglected and/or oppressed groups, the persons with mental illness are in the minority against those without mental illness.  This gives persons with mental illness a small voice in obtaining and/or fighting for their human rights.

Many mental illnesses require or would at least be aided by adequate food and shelter, medications, counseling, skill building, and many other services.  But without proper health insurance, adequate income, knowledge of one’s own mental illness, advocacy, etc, individuals often go without and their human rights are diminished and violated.

Often times these oppressed population groups intersect.  The mentally ill are often poor.  If one is mentally ill; he will have a greatly increased chance of struggling in obtaining and/or keeping employment. And there is evidence to suggest that this works the other way around as well.  If one is or becomes poor, he will be more likely to develop mental illness (http://www.treatmentsolutionsnetwork.com/blog/index.php/2011/04/06/link-between-poverty-and-mental-illness/).  

Society as a whole considers the mentally ill to be somewhat of a taboo population group.  Many don’t believe that the mentally ill are a group worthy of receiving social welfare services.  There is a lack of understanding of mental illness in our society.  This ignorance creates a huge barrier in providing persons with mental illness the services that they deserve so that their human rights can be fully realized.

                                                             Mental Illness: A Taboo