sonia anthony 1114376

 

  HUMANITARIAN APPROACHES:

   ‘Humanism’ began has a movement that emphasized the importance of specifically human interests and concerns.

    Paracelsus, a Swiss physician, was an early critic of superstitious belief about possession and has formulated the idea of psychic causes for mental illness and advocated treatment by “bodily magnetism “, later came to be known as hypnosis.

 Though he rejected demonology, his view of abnormal behavior was that the moon exerted a supernatural influence over the brain, this idea seem to exist within few persons even today. Weyer was one of the first physician who worked in specializing mental disorders and his experience and progressive views on it, made him the founder of modern psychopathology.

 The establishment of early asylums and shrines:

     From the sixteen century on, special institutions called asylums that was meant only for the care of mentally ill grew in number and it was commonly referred as 'madhouses' were not pleasant places but storage places for the insane. The first mental hospital that was set up in Spain was the Valencia mental hospital and a little is known about the treatment of patients in this asylum.

     In 1547, the monastery of St.Mary of Bethlehem was officially made into an asylum by Henry viii.On the streets of London the inmates were forced to take charity. In early asylums, inmates were brutally treated. The inmates were chained, not much attention was paid to what they ate. The cells were not clean and all this shows that there was lack of humanity. The treatments which they used to cure the patients were very much aggressive like electrical shocks, powerful drugs. Early estimates of the cure rate of patients were only about 20 percent.

 Humanitarian reform:

      During the late eighteen century, most mental asylums in Europe and America were in great need of reform. The humanitarian treatment provided great improvement in the living conditions of patients.

 Pinel s experiment:

      In 1792, pinel received permission of the revolutionary commune to remove the chains from some of the inmates as an experiment to test his views that mental patients should be treated with kindness and consideration as sick people but fortunately it was a great success. Gradually, the whole discipline was marked with regularity and kindness that which had the most favorable effect on the insane.

 Tuke s work in England:

       Tuke set up a pleasant house where mental patients lived and rested in a kind of religious atmosphere which was called York Retreat .They believed in treating all insane with kindness and acceptance and  this would help the mentally ill  to recover. They provided mental treatment for 200 years. In 1841 Hitch introduced trained nurses .These innovations improved the care provided to the patient’s .And also changed attitudes of the public towards the mentally disturbed.

 Rush and moral management in America:

     Benjamin rush was known to be the founder of American psychiatry. He encouraged more humane treatment for the cure of mentally ill. His medical theory was associated with astrology and remedies were bloodletting and purgatives. Furthermore, he invented a device called ‘the tranquilizing chair’ which was torturous for patients. The chair was thought to lessen the force of blood on the head and the muscles seemed to relax.

    Moral management method of treatment was widely used, focused on a patient’s social, individual and occupational needs. This emphasized the moral and spiritual development and rehabilitation of a patients ‘character’. Two reasons for moral management to be abandoned: was the rise of the mental hygiene movement which advocated a treatment on the physical well being of the patients. And the other is due to the advances in bio medical science; the notion was that all mental disorders would eventually yield to biological explanations and treatments.

  Dix and the mental hygiene movement:

Dorothea Dix worked for the poor in prisons and mental institutions for decades during the nineteenth century. She has also worked as a school teacher in her young adult but later retired early due to her illness. She mentions the inhumane treatment that was practiced during that period towards the mentally ill people and also mentions how mental hygiene movement advocates better treatment to the mentally disturbed.

 The military and the mentally ill:

Mental health treatment was advanced by military medicine. The Confederate army in the war opened the first mental health facility for the mentally disturbed in warfare. The evolution of military psychiatry in Germany brought about a number of contributions of psychiatrists to the field of abnormal psychology.

REFERENCE:

 (ABNORMAL PSYCHOLOGY :Robert C Carson, James N Butcher,Susan Mineka )