Insane Asylums in 1912?!
Question: Insane Asylums in 1912?
Does anyone know specific "treatments" they did? Preferably in 1912, but it doesn't really matter. I would just like to know what types of things they did. I know that once you got into an asylum you were going to die there. It was just a matter of how.
Thanks!
Answers:
Often "patients" were chained to their beds and locked in their rooms, with attendants taking them from place to place. Physicians of the time advised that a person with a severe psychological disorder needed lots of "bed rest," so patients were kept in their beds for weeks or months at a time; ironically, though, this actually made most people who had psychological disorders feel worse. In some "lunatic asylums," patients were treated like animals, and their basic human needs were denied. Often, people who were not mentally ill, such as people who had Muscular Dystrophy or motor neurological disorders, were falsely classified as mentally ill, and were kept in such asylums as isolation from society. People seldom visited lunatic asylums, and they became the butt of jokes in common society, while so-called religious leaders often portrayed mentally ill people as being "possessed by the devil."
All the best.
This is an interesting topic. It seems it would be hard to gather information on this but I'm sure you could find something.