In Nelle Bly’s chapters from the book Ten Days In a Mad House, the excerpt shows all of the wrong practices used by doctors in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The wrongdoings are in regard to the mistreatment of females who were deemed insane by expert doctors. Also, that doctors had not been given the proper training to come to such conclusions regarding women’s mental health. All of the practices that doctors used in classifying females as insane were not accurate and all of the expert doctors needed much more training and experience. With evidence from articles the practices have changed drastically in this day in age regarding the process by which women are deemed insane. The process of determining insanity and the way in which it was treated was very wrong by doctors of the early 1900s, however with more research into the issue the doctors have received the training required to accurately assess mental health problems. Through the articles giving information on the current process used by doctors and the way that these patients are treated explains perfectly how far the medical field has progressed.

In Bly’s chapters most of them are in reference to how all of the women who are held prisoner in the asylum know that they are not insane. However, all of these unfortunate women were sent here by the expert doctors who were trained poorly at the time to diagnose these women. One of the chapters focuses greatly on the doctors at the time at work on the patients as they go through the asylum. The process which is used does not adequately determine whether or not the patients have symptoms of insanity. Almost all of the questions asked are not in regards to mental health, instead just general question with no relevance to the current situation and goal of a diagnosis. In an article by PSYCHinfo, the process for determining mental conditions is a very well thought out process that is based on a person to person basis. All of the patients require different tests and processes that help to truly come to a determination of a person’s mental health. The doctors are also greatly more trained in their specific field; this means that people are getting the best possible care. One of the problems that I recognized from the chapters was that the process used by the doctors was a very set process that did not vary from person to person. Every single patient received the same process and series of questions, this is not the correct way to go about diagnosing mental health. All of the patients need an individualized process, there is no set process that works for every human on earth. With medical research this became very apparent in this current day and age. The article shows that all of the patients deserved an individualized process before the conclusion was made in regard to their mental health. Through medical research the process by which doctors use now is exponentially better. It is no longer based on the judgment calls of doctors without many qualifications to make those decisions. The doctors of this day and age are trained very thoroughly, as well as having much more experience than any doctors described in the chapters. The text helps the reader understand the culture of the world during that time period. The women in the asylum were truly never given a chance to explain themselves and doctors just immediately assumed the worst. The culture was heavily male dominant and women were never given a chance to prove themselves. This caused many women to end up in the mental asylum for no apparent reason other than a judgment call of a doctor with little experience. All of this evidence from the article shows how far the medical field has come and how wrong the process was described in Bly’s chapters.

Another aspect that is very controversial is how the people in the asylum were treated after getting diagnosed as insane. The asylums had such poor standards of living in all aspects, the entire place was way too cold all the time and the food was very poor. Bly says, “How we shivered as we stood there! The windows were open and the draught went whizzing through the hall. The patients looked blue with cold, and minutes stretched into hours.” (Bly, 285) This illustrates just how bad the living conditions were in the asylum. This is no way to live for anyone, especially people who are diagnosed as mentally insane. Many of the people in the asylum who were not insane probably went insane due to the inhumane living conditions described in the text. In an article by Salud Mental the ideal living conditions for those deemed mentally insane are described in detail. The article looks into the history of mental institutions and how they have been improved drastically throughout history. The psychiatric hospitals are used to help those with mental conditions to improve their condition and give them a safe environment to live in. All of the patients are placed into different sections in regards to how bad their mental condition is. In Bly’s chapters she often refers to just how bad the living conditions were in the asylum. They describe a living situation that is not suitable for anyone, especially those suffering from mental illnesses. Through research and experience the mental institutions have improved greatly since the 1900s and continue to improve to promote healthy lives for the patients. The medical fields improvement in this aspect show just how far they have come in regards to treatment of their patients.

All of the patients that were put into the asylum ended up worse off than before being placed in there. The low living standards caused the patients who were placed in there to become more mentally unstable. The entire purpose of a mental institution is to help people out, the asylum that Bly describes does not achieve that purpose by any means. Mental institutions are now more geared towards helping individuals who were placed in them through the correct process. With more research and knowledge in this particular field all of the improvements have given patients the best possible care for their problems. In Bly’s book it seems as though no one truly knows not only why they are in there, but why the conditions are so poor if they were sent there for help. Everything seems suspicious in the sense of having knowledge as to why the patients are there. The living conditions also made the patients at more risk to develop more symptoms of mental insanity. Considering everything, the asylum made all of the patients worse off than before. The fact that everyone in there was always trembling and cold is very concerning and that is not how a mental institution should be ran. The mental institution environment says a lot about the culture of the United States at this certain time. No real research or money was funded into people with mental disorders. Everything in the asylum was not used to help out the women instead to just have somewhere to hold them captive. The entire medical industry has come very far since then and all of the mental institutions now are truly used to help out the patients.

With all of this considered, the entire process by which women were put into these institutions and the conditions that they were forced to live in, did not promote healthy living or recovery from the illnesses they suffered from. Through medical research and experience all of the institutions in this current day and age are much different than the asylum described in Bly’s writing. All of the patients at the asylum were never given a chance to explain themselves and lived a very poor life while locked up in there. It was more of a prison than a mental institution, that is something that was overlooked and everyone just assumed that the women would disappear. With the inhumane treatment and the process by which the assessments were conducted shows just how far the field has come since then. Now everything is very well thought out, and the ways in which these doctors have gained experience in diagnosing patients shows how wrong the doctors in the early 1900s were doing the process. All of the people were not given a chance to explain themselves and lived in such poor conditions, the United States has come a very long way since then, and will continue to progress with more information on this topic. The entire mental health industry will keep getting better and better to make sure that events described in the chapters will never happen again.
