Mental hospitals have been around since the late 1700s and happen to have an eerie past that intrigues me. That is the reason I chose mental hospitals and everything associated with them as my topic. Ever since I was a little girl I have always been around and associated with people who have mental illnesses. My mother worked at a home for the mentally and physically disabled where I was first introduced to a man with schizophrenia. Being so young I didn’t quite understand what was wrong with all these people, specifically the schizophrenic. This was probably the point in my life when I became interested in these type of people and their living situations. This was the time when my mom told me the story about a movie called Sybil. Sybil made in 1976 tells the story of a lady who has multiple personalities due to sexual abuse by her mother as a child.

My intent for this blog is to learn more information about these institutions and all things associated with them good or bad, and share it with the readers. Seeing as I am planning on majoring in nursing and possibly specializing in the mental health field I thought my interest in it would help me learn more and get prepared for the type of people I may work with. I am specifically interested in the dark history of mental hospitals like the mistreatment of patients, unethical surgeries and treatments, dirty living conditions, and overcrowding. In my opinion, mental hospitals in the early years sound like they should have been built for disease bearing animals not humans.

Hospitals for the mentally insane are just one other thing in the history of America that shows how cruel we can be to our own people; which is exactly what the mentally ill are, people.

 

What to look forward to next: A History of Mental Hospitals

Before psychiatric hospitals started being developed, people with mental illness were kept in prisons and basements away from other people. There were no proper treatments to help these people, and in most cases, the illness became worse after the people were locked away by themselves with nothing. The revolution of developing facilities specifically for these people started when prisons became overcrowded with the mentally ill. However the issue of overcrowding only became worse in the established hospitals. A hospital for 500 was housing as many patients as 2,000.

Danvers State Hospital- Danvers, Massachusetts

 

 

 

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