105 - What was life like in an Asylum? Flashcards
How did the medical community refer to mental illness across time?
Lunancy then insanity
What were early mental health treatments?
Fetters - confinements
Hydrotherapy
Who was housed in asylums and why were they there?
Paupers, Vagabonds and prostitutes. Also people with lunancy or insanity. Also people suffering from leprosy and various other ailments.
Why did the medical community move from the term “lunacy” to the term “insanity” and from the term “asylum” to the term “hospital”?
Lunancy and the effet of the moon, that connection. Insanity replaces lunancy. Asylum aka retreat to hospital to recognize the the physical diseas and remove negative stigma associated with asylum.
What caused the transition in the medical model that led to better treatment for people in asylums/hospitals?
These are people and a disease and not something they caused themselves. They also feel pain and cold.
Why were early asylums used to confine people (not treat them) to manage social control?
Fetters - confinement tools like straight jackets, chaining to the bed.
What is moral treatment and what did it involve?
So moral treatment, the idea is that everything about a person’s surroundings, their environment is a part of treatment. And so we build these asylums, these purpose built institutions in order to provide a therapeutic environment.
the major components of moral treatment in North America are what was called employment, but it’s unpaid patient labor. But the terminology they used is employment. There’s no exchange of salaries or any of that.
But you would have purposeful work, was the idea that you weren’t sitting around idly, but tasks had been assigned to you and they were gender role specific.
What did Nellie Bly do and why was it important?
She was a reporter
She faked insanity to be admitted to Blackwell’s Island an asylum in NY. She wrote a book and it led to a grand jury investigation of the NY state asylum system.
What were sexual surgeries and why were they done?
Some superintendents argues that there was ill health within the sexual organs. Thought was that it may cure their insanity and that masturbation is seen as a cause of insanity. This was controversial even at the time.
Explain how early understandings of the causes of mental illness could have benefited from a more scientific approach to understanding.
How did changes in nursing affect the lives of early mental health professionals working in asylums/hospitals?
Training programs started, lectures on insanity, new line of respect for nurses, hours, pay grade, now adopted uniforms. Nursing schools and staff finally got residences and staff got moved out.
