A Reform of Treatment: An Analysis of the American Asylum
Location
Room 207, Schewel Hall
Access Type
Campus Access Only
Entry Number
99
Start Date
4-5-2023 10:15 AM
End Date
4-5-2023 10:30 AM
College
Lynchburg College of Arts and Sciences
Department
History
Keywords
Asylum, Mental Health, New York, Blackwell's Island, Bloomingdale, Utica, Kirkbride Plan, Moral Treatment, Nineteenth Century, American History
Abstract
Asylums took root in America in the nineteenth century. Faced with the difficult task of legitimizing mental healthcare as a field of practice, medical superintendents made decisions that benefited the health of their practices rather than their patients. While their methods of treatment were well founded in the research of Phillipe Pinel and William Tuke, and while they had the freedom to shape American healthcare as they desired, the medical superintendents were overzealous in their plans and ultimately failed to implement the policies of moral treatment with their many patients. Likewise, while medical superintendents claimed to need complete control over their patients’ environments, they quickly found themselves spread too thin in their institutions to genuinely help their patients. New York asylums exemplify the impracticality of moral treatment for the masses but also the varying treatment available for different classes and how that changed, as well as the faulty nature of the medical superintendent as the central figure of treatment with large patient numbers. Though well-intentioned, American asylums and their keepers were ultimately detrimental to their patients and to Americans’ faith in the field of psychiatric medicine.
Faculty Mentor(s)
Dr. Lisa Crutchfield Dr. Edward DeClair Dr. Beth Savage Dr. Price Blair
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A Reform of Treatment: An Analysis of the American Asylum
Room 207, Schewel Hall
Asylums took root in America in the nineteenth century. Faced with the difficult task of legitimizing mental healthcare as a field of practice, medical superintendents made decisions that benefited the health of their practices rather than their patients. While their methods of treatment were well founded in the research of Phillipe Pinel and William Tuke, and while they had the freedom to shape American healthcare as they desired, the medical superintendents were overzealous in their plans and ultimately failed to implement the policies of moral treatment with their many patients. Likewise, while medical superintendents claimed to need complete control over their patients’ environments, they quickly found themselves spread too thin in their institutions to genuinely help their patients. New York asylums exemplify the impracticality of moral treatment for the masses but also the varying treatment available for different classes and how that changed, as well as the faulty nature of the medical superintendent as the central figure of treatment with large patient numbers. Though well-intentioned, American asylums and their keepers were ultimately detrimental to their patients and to Americans’ faith in the field of psychiatric medicine.