The rise of Insane Asylums In America

Originally physical health care was given in homes. But those who were too violent or mentally unstable were to be sent to public almshouses and private hospitals which had separate sections for the mentally ill. This occurred primarily in East Coast cities until the early decades of the 19th century. In this time America largely adopted the European system.

This new system was called moral treatment and was aimed at individuals who wanted an “asylum.” The treatment was ¨built on the assumption that those suffering from mental illness could find their way to recovery and an eventual cure if treated kindly and in ways that appealed to the parts of their minds that remained rational.¨ It was against the use of harsh restraints and long periods of isolation that had been previously used. It depended instead on ¨specially constructed hospitals that provided quiet, secluded, and peaceful country settings; opportunities for meaningful work and recreation.¨

By the 1890s things took a turn for the worse. Many local governments found they could save money by claiming elderlies as senile and sending them to asylums rather than paying for nursing homes. As a result the number of patients in asylums swelled beyond capacity. The practice of morale treatment began to shift. Nurses were retrained and things stabilized.

In the 1930s economic crisis hit. Psychatrists ¨turned back to new forms of therapies that posited brain pathology as a cause of mental illness in the same way that medical doctors posited pathology in other body organs as the cause of physical symptoms: they tried insulin and electric shock therapies, psychosurgery, and different kinds of medications.¨ From this we gained the horror stories that we see in movies and that possibly inspired the treatment of the mentally ill in Germany. At Fairfield Hills State Hospital in Conneticut ¨as a calming method, patients were submerged in ice water sometimes for more than a full day. They were not permitted out, even to relieve themselves.¨ At the New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum stomachs, testicles, ovaries, colons, and gall bladders of residents were removed leading to many deaths.

By the 1950s America shifted again to a new system. Asylums closed down and ¨a new system of nursing homes would meet the needs of vulnerable elders. A new medication, chlorpromazine, offered hopes of curing the most persistent and severe psychiatric symptoms. And a new system of mental health care, the community mental health system, would return those suffering from mental illnesses to their families and their communities.¨ Today we largely use the same system. Few historical psychiatric hospitals are still open. American has shifted to better more specific care and the chapter of abuse of the mentally ill has mostly been closed.

Do you think this relates to the Nazi treatment of the mentally ill? Have you ever been to a historic insane asylum?

https://www.nursing.upenn.edu/nhhc/nurses-institutions-caring/history-of-psychiatric-hospitals/
https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/crime-history/4-of-the-worlds-most-notorious-barbaric-insane-asylums