Joel Philip 1114352

Historical  Views of Abnormal Behavior -Toward Humanitarian Approaches

From the times in memory till the Middle Ages superstitious beliefs had hindered the understanding and therapeutic treatment of mental disorders. It was towards the end of the Middle Ages and with the beginning of the early Renaissance, the emphasis on the human interests and concerns sprout out a long with scientific questioning and reasoning, Humanism.

The asylums in the beginning was labelled as “Madhouses,” an institution exclusively meant for the treatment of the mentally sick patients. These institution reacted to these mentally ill people in a very brutal and inhuman way such as electric shocks, powerful drugs .A violent patient would be immersed into ice water, the patient's hand and feet were chained. These asylums were in place to isolate so called “troublesome.” One of the first hosiptals was Valencia Mental Hospital, founded by a priest named Juan Pilberto Jofre in the year 1409 in Españiol. In 1547, HenryVIII established an asylum by converting a monastery of St Mary, Bedlam was the name of the hospital. But this hospital was shut due to the brutal treatment of these patients. They were forced to beg on the streets etc. . Soon such asylums for the mentally ill were established in other countries such as; Mexico in 1566, France in 1641, Moscow in 1764. These asylums continued to exist through most of the 18^th century continuing to treat the inmates terribly.

The first recorded Lunatic Asylum in Europe was the Bethlehem Royal Hospital in London, it has been a part of London since 1247 when it was built as a priory. It became a hospital in 1330 and admitted its first mentally ill patients in 1407. Before the Madhouse Act of 1774, treatment of the Insane was carried out by non-licensed practitioners, who ran their “Madhouses” as a commercial enterprise and with little regard for the inmates. The Mad House act established the licensing required to house insane patients, with yearly inspections of the premises taking place.

(http://www.thetimechamber.co.uk/beta/sites/asylums/asylum-history/the-history-of-the-asylum)

A Swiss physician, Paracelsus was the first person to critic the ideology of possession. “He asserted that the dancing mania was a form of disease that should be treated, and was not possession.” His perspective of abnormal psychology was through his belief in astral influences. He explained the abnormal behaviour with the view that the moon exerted a supernatural influence over the brain, Hence rejecting the demonology. He also contented a conflict between the instinctual and spiritual natures of human beings, and he proposed the idea of psychic reasons/causes for mental illness and he advised for “bodily magnetism” which was later known to be as Hypnosis.

In 16^th Century. A German physician and writer, focused on the injustice done to the mental patients, that is, by torture, imprisonment and burning of the people etc In the year 1563 he did a detail study and authored a book called “The Deception of Demons” His goal was to widen the knowledge about the mental sickness and to spread the awareness that these people who were brutally tortured were actually sick in body or mind and did not deserve any cruel and inhuman treatment.

Advocates such as Weyer and others, gradually paved the way for the reemergence of observation and reason which culminated in the development of modern experimental and clinical approaches. Weyer, though he was scorned by his peers as “Weirus Insanus” and was banned by the Church until the 20^th century, he was one of the first physicans to specialize in mental disorder and was known as the founder of modern psycopathalogy.( http://www.scribd.com/doc/11482026/004-chapter-2-historical-contemporary-views0001)

Humanitarian Reform

William Tuke set up a pleasant house where mental patients lived and rested in a kind atmosphere which was called york retreat .They believed in treating all insane with kindness .They view that kindness would help the mentally ill people to recover.They provided mental treatment for 200 years..In 1841 Hitch introduced trained nurses .These innovations improved the care provided to the patients .It also changed attitudes  of the public towards the mentally ill people.

The humanitarian experiments of Pinels and Tukes  changed the treatment of mental patients throughout the western world.Rush was the first to organize a course in psychiatry .He invented a device for treatment which was called ''the tranquilizing chair'',which was torturous .This was thought to decrease the flow of blood to the head and the muscles relaxes During the period of humanitarian reform, moral management came into existence.Moral management is defined as the treatment that focuses on the patients social ,individual needs .This approach came from the works of Pinel and Tuke .Moral management emphasizes on the patients moral and spiritual development rather than on mental disorders .The treatment  was through manual labour and humane treatment.( http://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/hip/us/hip_us_pearsonhighered/samplechapter/0205765319.)

“Moral management in asylums emphasized the patients’ moral and spiritual development and the rehabilitation of their “character” rather than their physical oriental disorders, in part because very little effective treatment was available for these conditions at the time. The treatment or rehabilitation of the physical or mental disorders was usually through manual labor and spiritual discussion, along with humane treatment. Moral management achieved a high degree of effectiveness—which is all the more amazing because it was done without the benefit of the antipsychotic drugs used today and because many of the patients were probably suffering from syphilis, a then-incurable disease of the central nervous system. In the 20-year period between 1833 and 1853, Worcester State Hospital’s discharge rate for patients who had been ill less than a year before admission was 71 percent. Even for patients with a longer preadmission disorder, the discharge rate was 59 percent (Bockhoven, 1972). In London, Walford (1878) reported that during a 100-year period ending in 1876, the “cure” rate was 45.7 percent for the famed Bedlam Hospital. Despite its reported effectiveness in many cases, moral management was nearly abandoned by the latter part of the nineteenth century. The reasons were many and varied. Among the more obvious ones were ethnic prejudice against the rising immigrant population in hospitals, leading to tension between staff and patients; the failure of the movement’s leaders to train their own replacements; and the overextension of hospital facilities, which reflected the misguided belief that bigger hospitals would differ from smaller ones only in size” (Robert, Butcher, Hooley, & Mineka, 2007).

In The 20^th century Clifford beers and a few others influenced the rapid growth of mental asylums. Patients were hospitalized for many years treatment was not always humane. 1946 however, marked the beginning of an important period of change. From then on humane mental treatment was provided.

The latter half of the 20^th century saw vigorous efforts being made to close down mental hospitals. It advocated that the psychiatrically ill must be with the community instead of being isolated .This came to be called “Deinstitutionalization.”  By the end of the 20^th century, inpatient mental care was replaced by community based care. From where we stand today, psychiatric care is likely to progress in the years to come. ( Robert, Butcher, Hooley, & Mineka. (2007). Abnormal Psychology (13th edition ed.). Pearson Education and Dorling Kindersley Publishing.)