Asylum Reform Research Paper

Asylums Through the Ages: The History of Asylum Reform Ever since the first time someone got sick, people have needed treatment. The same applies to those with mental illnesses, although for the first 19 centuries or so, people did not necessarily see it that way. The concept of a ‘mad’ or ‘insane’ person has, for the most part, always been established, but not until relatively recently did people realize what mental illness actually was. In American Colonial times, people who were afflicted were believed to be possessed by a demon, or some result of magic or the devil’s tricks. Therefore, these people did not receive any treatment other than an exorcism or other religiously affiliated methods. That is, if they were even treated. In this rural culture of the
This thought of others assuming responsibility for those deemed ‘insane’ continued throughout the nineteenth century as well. However, the more populated and industrialized America became, the more accounts there were of insane people locked up and chained somewhere. Many families would do this in order to ‘protect’ the mentally ill from harming both themselves, and others. Unfortunately, along with this increase, the communities also increased in their general fear toward the ill, meaning that most became unwilling to support them as they had in the small communities of colonial America. Instead, many were sent to jail, where they were kept with both violent and minor criminals, debtors, and murderers (Brinkley). Those who were neither in jail, nor locked away at home, suffered in “hospitals” or institutions where they were most often abused as a form of ‘treatment’(Tomes). Before the reforms spurred by Dorothea Dix in asylum culture, not much headway was made on the subject of mental illness. Fortunately, throughout these reforms in the nineteenth century, the prior social traditions in America toward people with mental illnesses changed, allowing for