Psychiatric Hospitals In The 18th Century

The history of psychiatric hospitals find its origins in classical workhouses and houses of correction. From the 18th to 20th century, there was a transformation of workhouses into insane asylums and finally into psychiatric hospitals and along with this transformation of institutions came a shift to medical understandings of mental illness. Ultimately, the barbarous practices that occurred within asylums caused another shift in psychiatric care towards deinstitutionalization, psychology outside of asylums, and increased psychiatric medication. There were two prominent figures who laid the foundations for the transformation of the workhouse into a psychiatric institution, William Tuke in England and Philippe Pinel in France. This paper will
Mental illness came to be seen as an ailment which could be treated and cured. In the early 1780s, there was a movement towards introducing more humane conditions into asylums. This movement developed into moral treatment. Moral treatment was established by French physician Philippe Pinel and English Quaker William Tuke. Moral Treatment was an approach to mental illness based on psychosocial care and moral discipline that was both psychiatry and religious in nature. Scientific and religious leaders in moral reform “viewed madness as a breakdown of internal, rational discipline on the part of the
Similar to his mentor Pinel, Esquirol championed for asylums to be therapeutic institutions. He wrote the ground-breaking psychiatric text, Mental Maladies, in 1838 and did extensive research into psycho-social triggers. Esquirol further developed psychiatric practices in in asylums by studying under cohorts of French psychiatrists. Esquirol expanded on Pinel’s work on moral insanity and affective disorders. As early as 1819, Esquirol had devised a plan for a national system of asylums in France. A national system formed in France with a state led effort for the institutionalization of madness. Esquirol established multiple new mental hospitals in France. Furthermore, Esquirol established the National Asylum in Paris and was appointed director. As director, he emphasized careful selection of attendants and the establishment of a psychiatric