A doll with cracks on its face| Photo by Aimee Vogelsang
There are several factors to consider before one is admitted to a psychiatric hospitals. Whether it’s an eating disorder or a mental health issue, a patient requires professional treatments in order to get back to becoming a healthy and functioning individual.
Asylum Scandals by Patricia Lubeck is a book that exposes the terrible histories of the two oldest state hospitals in Minnesota. Through actual documented accounts and interviews, this book provides a glimpse of how mental asylums treated their patients from 1867 to 1915. It also exposes the corruption, abuses, and inhumane procedures that the asylums are guilty of.
Nowadays, mental asylums are now converted into psychiatric hospitals that also specialize in treating severe mental and behavioral health disorders, minus the inhumane procedures that mental asylums used to do. In today’s world, mental hospitals shift away from containing and restraining patients and focus on treating mental health people to still become functional citizens.
Since behavioral and mental health issues are more rampant nowadays, people have become more open to seeking help and therapy to allow themselves treatment and healing.
Modern psychiatric hospitals cater to people with the following issues:
Psychosis
Psychosis refers to one’s loss of contact with reality. A person with psychosis will experience delusions and hallucinations. It also impacts the brain functions of the individual, giving him the experience of hearing, seeing, feeling, or believing things that are not real. Psychiatric hospitals can provide the proper treatment and further observations with the patients.
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental illness that affects how the brain functions, affecting the flow of thoughts and behaviors. Its symptoms include delusion, hallucination, and lack of emotional expression. This mental illness needs lifelong treatment and care. Psychiatric hospitals provide treatment, such as medications, psychotherapy, psychotherapy, and social support to help the affected person.
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder is characterized by episodes of extreme mood disturbances that affect the mood, thoughts, and behaviors. The condition has two types: Bipolar I, which involves episodes of severe mania or depression, and Bipolar II, which involves hypomania, the less severe form of mania. Psychiatric hospitals treat bipolar patients with mood stabilizers or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
Major Depression
Depression is a condition characterized by symptoms such as persistent sadness and diminished interest in previously enjoyable activities. This condition affects the functionality of an individual. Psychiatric hospitals help treat depressed individuals through psychotherapy and medications.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD is a condition characterized by obsessions and compulsions that impact one’s daily life. Formerly classified as an anxiety disorder, OCD affects a person through thoughts, images, and ideas that induce anxiety. Professionals in psychiatric hospitals will provide psychotherapy and medications to help ease the person from the anxious thoughts.
An organized set of colored pencils | Photo by Lucas George Wendt
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD is a mental health condition caused by several factors, such as violence, accidents, terrorism, illness, natural disasters, abuse, and the death of a loved one. A person with PTSD keeps getting haunted by the memories of their past experiences, giving them flashbacks, anxiety, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, avoidance, and changes in mood and thinking. Psychiatric hospitals provide effective therapies to patients to help them with their trauma. The procedures include cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy, exposure therapy, and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR).
Eating Disorder
An eating disorder is a mental health disorder that affects the thoughts and emotions of the affected individual towards food and anything related to food. A person who suffers from an eating disorder becomes preoccupied with the thoughts that the food they’re eating might make them fat. This disorder affects one’s views on self-image, becoming life-threatening because of malnutrition. Eating disorders come with depression, OCD, anxiety, and panic disorders. Psychiatric hospitals help patients with eating disorders through therapies and medications.
What Mental Asylums of the Past Will Do to Mental Health Patients
Mental asylums of the past are controversial with the way they treat their patients. They follow procedures that are inhumane by today’s standards. However, some of these procedures are still active nowadays but in a more improved and humane form.
A damaged mannequin with vandals | Photo by Simon Hurry
Here are some procedures that mental asylums would provide to mental and behavioral health patients:
Hydrotherapy Sprays
Patients experiencing mania, insomnia, depression, and psychosis are sprayed with water with a specific range of temperatures. In the past, they used water to control the blood flow depending on its temperature. Asylum attendants would give warm hydrotherapy for insomniac patients to allow a smooth flow of blood and help the person calm down. They give cold hydrotherapy to those with manic-depressive psychosis to slow down the blood flow.
Shock Therapies
Back in the day, patients suffering from schizophrenia are given shock therapy for treatment. Shock therapy evolved throughout the years. It originally used insulin to help induce coma or seizures. The therapy then became Metrazol Therapy, which administered Metrazol instead of insulin. It induced epileptic convulsions, which are said to be the “cure” for schizophrenia and epilepsy. After Metrazol was phased out, asylums used electricity to shock patients suffering from depression, mania, paranoia, and schizophrenia.
Lobotomy
Lobotomy is a type of brain surgery that reduces agitation and tension in patients. The procedure involves severing the connection between the frontal lobe and the other parts of the brain. Asylum attendants would provide lobotomies to patients with schizophrenia and depression in the 1930s.
Nowadays, psychiatric hospitals follow the proper protocols when handling patients. Medical professionals and social workers have the expertise to help out those people in need, especially those who are greatly suffering from their mental and behavioral health conditions.
Learn more about the different procedures used to treat mental health patients. Buy Patricia Lubeck’s Asylum Scandals today!
- What Qualifies One to be in Psychiatric Hospitals - September 27, 2024
- Mental Health Matters: Deserving of Rightful Aid and Care - September 24, 2024
- A Grim Throwback to Asylums During the Great Depression - August 30, 2024
Recent Comments