- The first psychiatric hospitals began in 1773.
- Prior to this patients would have been put in prison and been mistreated because people didn't understand them.
- Before the development of psychiatric drug therapy the most common therapies used were; electroshock therapy, Insulin coma therapy and lobotomies.
- Drugs developed for psychiatric treatments came about around 1954.
- 600,000 people were affected by the harsh conditions of mental illness hospitals in 1960.
- In 1963 John F Kennedy signed a document allowing 150 million dollars to help fund new techniques used to treat mental illness.
- By this time there were now laws in place for the protection and well treatments of the mentally ill, however some institutions still failed to follow these rules and continued the inhumane treatment on there patients.
- The number of patients in mental institutions by 1975 declined by 62%.
Accounts of living in an institution for the insane.
ACCOUNT NO1.
William Carney:
"Grace New Haven hospital, a private hospital where I spent several
weeks in 1960, was the first of my
hospital experiences in New England. Although little active treatment
was provided, I did receive some
group therapy, and both the treatment and the environment proved to
be better than most of my subsequent experiences."
"Discharge planning and follow-up
treatment were notably absent from
most of my hospitalization experi-
ences in the 1960s. The process of
transfer from one hospital to another
was difficult and painful."
"Bellevue was a nightmare—extremely crowded, with many patients’ beds in the
hallways. The conflicts among the patients were never-ending. My treatment consisted of my old standby,
chlorpromazine, with Stelazine (trifluoperazine) added. The trifluoperazine made me extremely agitated, so
I spent most of my time at Bellevue
pacing the floors."
"My first stay at Mayview had been
the worst experience of my life. This
experience began with a brief hospitalisation at a local community hospital in 1961, followed by an abrupt
transfer to Mayview, where I remained for six months. The hospital
used an assembly-line technique to
administer electroconvulsive therapy
(ECT). I could see many people in
front of me getting treatment and go-
ing through convulsions. I saw about
five of these treatments before actually getting to the gurney myself. After the shock
treatments I was given chlorpromazine and forced to work in the bakery without pay. I was forced to carry
soiled laundry from building to building, my payment being a candy bar at
the end of the day."
To read the full article go to this link:
http://ps.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/appi.ps.56.12.1499
ACCOUNT NO2.
Annemarie:
Locked up for having sex before you were married, or for being gay. Often the diagnoses that got people put away were meaninglessly vague: imbecile, or feeble-minded (where the only proof might be having got pregnant out of wedlock). Those who are alive and able to recall the banging on the windows and cold baths are survivors; many died behind the locked doors, and some are still unable to talk about their time inside.
After the death of her son Annemarie began to punish herself:
'I just drifted. Then one day the police picked me up near Chatham and put me in hospital. They told me I had to stay there because I was a danger to myself. I attacked myself with razor blades, broken bottles; I used to put my hands through glass.'
'They thought that was good therapy, many moons ago. They'd inject you with insulin and you'd go into a coma. Then they'd wake you up and feed you, and after you'd go back to sleep. I was given ECT. I didn't sign up for it. I was told I had to have it, and I had no one to fight the battle for me. They said it made you forget, but it was worse afterwards, to be frank, when it all came back. I used to think, Why haven't I got anybody? And I used to hate Annemarie more and more.'
ACCOUNT NO3.
Edna Martin:
'I thought to myself, "I'm not, I'm not those things", and I retaliated against everybody - the doctors, staff, everybody. So I got put in a side ward and I got doped for it. They gave you paraldehyde to sleep at night, but if it was for punishment, it was the needle.'
'I was put in a straitjacket on the isolation ward. I was naked underneath: they kicked the chamber pots into you and you had to manage as best you could. The windows were shuttered, so it was dark. They also kicked in your food on a tin plate and you had to eat it off the floor.'
'They used enemas for punishment. I was once sitting with my legs up under me, and a nurse pulled out the chair from underneath me so I fell on the floor. I asked what she'd done that for, and she marched me to the bathroom.'
'There was no privacy. There were two baths, and the nurse would stand in the middle and, all the time, she'd be passing remarks about your body. They thought nothing of giving you a cold water bath for punishment. Or they'd get a wet bath towel, put it under a cold tap, twist it, and hit you with it.'
ACCOUNT NO4.
Derek Hutchinson.
Derek was given 10 sessions of ECT and prescribed Largactil and other psychotropic drugs. His psychiatrist, Dr Todd, suggested that it was time something was done to control his aggression. Derek objected that his aggression had never been irrational, 'but this Todd said, "How would you like to be responsible for the death of one of your children?" I told him there was no possibility of that, but he said that violence was self-progressing, and I could hit one of my kids and they could die afterwards. I couldn't allow that to happen, no matter what. So then he said that there was this operation.'
the stimulation and destruction of the posteromedial hypothalamic nuclei in restless and aggressive behaviour' - had been pioneered in Japan by a neurosurgeon called Kajo Sanno. Only much later did Derek discover that Sanno had been struck off when all the patients on whom he tried it had died. He was told at the time that 12 people had had the operation in the UK; he has tried subsequently to track them down. 'I've only found one. He's in a private nursing home and can't speak.'
the procedure involved inserting, under anaesthetic, two nylon balls into the scalp and guiding rods through them into the brain to burn out the areas that were 'responsible for aggression'.
Derek was operated on while awake. (Knowing how far to go with the procedure apparently required the surgeons to watch the dilatation of his pupils). 'The only thing I can liken it to is having a tooth out without anaesthetic, putting a needle in to the nerve, wiggling it around and then burning it. I felt I'd been hit on the head with a sledgehammer, and then as if I was cooking.'
'Previously, I might have got into a fight, but now I would plan violence. There was stuff going through my brain that's not the stuff people normally think about. I can't say what, without making myself seem a monster.' He came close to shooting somebody, and almost firebombed a house. 'I was meticulous about planning it. I came close to killing that man.'
Derek has seen a letter in which Dr Todd advised Mr Wall that he would suitable for the operation because he had 'no gross psychological abnormality'. In which case, he asks, why did they butcher his brain?'
After reading these horrific accounts of mistreatment I have now gained a clearer image for my project of how my character of Claudia will look. Her appearance would be gaunt and slim, she would look almost zombie like in appearance after being tortured and numbed for so many years that her brain cannot cope with the stress, as well as the thought of a demon being inside the mind, causing more mental stress and internal torture. She would be dirty and hopeless and her clothes would have stains and be thin and not fit very well. It has also given me a chance to reflect on my project and how I should create the back story of Claudia's life, how did she become possessed? What made her the way she is? What sort of treatments will she be undergoing during her stay in Briar-cliff mental institution?
Most Accounts found here:
Time lines of mental illness:
