
The issue of women’s mental health and women’s rights have been an issue for a very long time. For many years these issues have been swept under the rug and nothing has been done about the consequences that have been caused by the lack of attention shown to these problems. In Ten Days in a Madhouse by Nellie Bly, the author discusses the situation women are put in when they are sent away to an insane asylum. Many of the women in the late 19th century and early 20th century were sent away to these asylums without having any mental disabilities at all. This is where the idea of women’s rights comes in. 

The mental health of women especially has been a concern for a very long period of time. And not just the issue of mental health itself, but also the problem of how these women who were deemed “mentally ill” were cared for in the mental hospitals they were placed in. Nellie Bly wrote in her story Ten Days in a Madhouse of her experience when she voluntarily went into one of these mental hospitals for women to prove her theories that (1) not all the women in the hospitals were mentally ill and (2) the care for these women was inhumane at best and they were not treated as human beings at all. In her story, Bly basically went undercover and purposefully was sentenced to a mental hospital for women to see exactly what their days were like, their living quarters, the nurses’ treatment of them (if one may actually call them nurses at all considering they did not act like well-trained nurses), and the doctors’ way of working. To say the least, Bly is less than impressed with all of these conditions. She finds many women that were sentenced there simply because they argued back against their husbands or disagreed with them. In her time period, women were pretty much counted as “inferior” to men and were treated this way too. Because of this, women during this time period were pushed around and forced to do whatever men of the government, law enforcement, or husbands said. If these women did not abide by these standards, then they were rejected as outcasts or put away in mental institutions. And often there were times that women, who were put in these mental hospitals, would legitimately go insane from the living conditions, the treatment they got, and the sheer horror of the place. During the time period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, not much was known about mental health. Doctors did not know what caused it, or how to treat it, so they just deemed people mentally unstable and insane left and right. Numerous amounts of people (both men and women) were sent away to the mental institutions with absolutely no problems mentally. In E. H. Mullan’s “Mental Hygiene”, Mullan states:

In order to be hygienic one must be mentally hygienic; that is, one must think well, feel well, and practice well that which he has learned. Briefly, mental hygiene is the basis or the very foundation of all hygiene.  (Mullan, 171)

Mullan is saying that to be sound and appropriate in all areas of hygiene, one must be mentally sound and strong. It is the most basic sense of caring for oneself. 

The care provided for the patients in the mental hospitals was hardly beneficial or caring towards these patients. Bly wrote that there were many times when she heard other patients screaming out in pain because they had been beaten by the nurses that were there to take care of them. Instead of protecting the patients and providing the care they were being paid to provide, these nurses would often times use the patients as a point of laughter or something to poke fun at. And if these women who were being jested at ever talked back, Bly says that they would usually be beaten or slapped. These institutions were not happy places. They were hardly fit for living, which is why the government decided to put the “rejects” or “outcasts” of society in them. Some even thought the patients were possessed by demons or spirits and especially did not want them around.  These people that believed in spirits and witchcraft would often think even the family of the mentally ill person was being punished for some wicked thing they had done to deserve having someone with a disability in their family, so even sometimes the family would be outcast and everyone would avoid them at all costs. Many people in Bly’s day had no idea why people had mental illnesses or where the mental issues originated. 

E. H. Mullan also says that parents with mental disease or deficiency will often transmit the same or similar disability to their children (Mullan, 171). In saying this, Mullan is scientifically correct. However, not all mental illness is hereditary. 

In Nellie Bly’s day and time, women were sent away to mental health institutions more regularly than men were. In that day and age women were not given as many opportunities to succeed either. Culturally they were to be house wives and mothers and strictly work in the home and please their husbands. It was frowned upon if a woman tried to get a job that a man worked. Men did all the governmental work. Women were considered inferior and did not get much of a say, if at all, in any decision making. This was not only on the West side of the Atlantic Ocean. This was commonly found all around the globe (and in some countries still is). Europe was very similar in its beliefs and considerations of women during this time. Women were not considered as developed and important as men. Rebecca J. Cook, in her “Enforcing women’s rights through law” article, says “The protection and promotion of the human rights of women has to be first on the development agenda” (Cook, 8). She knows that the rights of women are not a priority in government. She wrote her article in 1995 and obviously still had issues with how things were going legally for women. Throughout history women have been treated unequally to men. Sexism has been a very prevalent thing in the United States of America and even now sometimes continues to be. Cook gives examples in recent history of how wives were not treated fairly and equally compared to their husbands. She says: 

Until the 1920s, English laws on divorce gave husbands the right to divorce their wives on grounds of adultery, but in order for wives to exercise their right to divorce, additional grounds were needed, such as assault. In France and Spain, female but not male adultery was a ground for imprisonment. (Cook, 12)

Women were rarely ever given a second thought as to their human rights. Men had way more of a free reign to do whatever they wanted with it, while women, as it seemed, were on quite a shorter leash. The only way women were able to divorce their husbands was if their husbands were beating them and mistreating them. Husbands could divorce their wives if their wives were having another relationship with someone outside of that marriage, but women, on the other hand, had to be beaten and mistreated to be able to file for divorce. In England, however, by the 1970s divorce by mutual consent did become legal. The thought process behind these actions is very astounding. Men used to think women did not have the right to separate themselves from their husbands because they could not fend for themselves without a husband, seeing as how women were not able to have the same jobs that their husbands (or ex-husbands) had, and were highly looked down upon if they were divorced, single women trying to provide for themselves. Now, in the 21st century, one may easily see how easy it is for women to have the same jobs as their male counterparts and how easy it is to provide for themselves without being looked down upon and judged for being single and unmarried. 

Women’s human rights have been violated for centuries. Only in recent history have laws been passed protecting their legal rights. Women from many countries had had their rights revoked or just straight trampled over. The United Nations is linked to a societal meeting called the “Global Tribunal on Violations of Women’s Human Rights” (Fester, 76). This is a meeting that has taken place several times with the purpose of discussing how to fix and annihilate the problem of women’s rights being infringed upon. During this meeting, women from many different countries across the world, sharing the same problem, gathered to share their own stories or testimonies of how their very own rights had been taken away or ignored completely. Fester also says they “highlighted how existing human-rights laws and mechanisms had failed to protect and promote women’s human rights” (Fester, 76). Different topic heading divided their stories. These topics included abuse in the family; war crimes against women; violations of bodily integrity; socio-economic rights; and finally, political persecution and discrimination (Fester, 77). When talking about the first topic, (abuse in the family), these various women talked and shared experiences of women who had been beaten and mistreated and how police failed to protect these women from their torturers. One woman from Canada, Johanna Gilbert, had been beaten and raped by someone she knew. After all this had happened, she had been confined to a wheelchair for life and is quoted as saying “All this, just because I said that small two-letter word: ‘No’” (Fester, 77). War crimes against women were discussed and some things were very eye-opening and shocking. During the 1930s and through World War II, the Japanese army took and arrested thousands and thousands of Japanese women to be sex slaves for the soldiers. These women, aside from being taken from home and being forced to leave everything they had behind, were raped, beaten, and tortured just so the soldiers could have some sort of pleasure while fighting in the war. Violations against women’s bodies was the next subject. This topic includes rape and mutilation of the female body. To stay simple, women have been disrespected according to their bodies and the use of their bodies. Then social and economic oppression was discussed. Women had been politically discriminated against. This discrimination includes how they were not part of the government much, if at all. Yes, they did get the right to vote in 1920, but they still did not have a place in government. The issue of socio-economic oppression goes hand in hand with the political persecution women lived under. 

Going back to the mental health aspect, the treatment of women has been very poor until very recently in history. Bly brought to attention the issue of mental health, particularly women’s mental health, back in the early 20th century. She really brought to light, in this country specifically, the problems of the judicial system sending people away to mental institutions based on their behavior and/or mental status. Before Bly wrote Ten Days in a Madhouse, people were unaware and indifferent to the care of those who did have a disability. People did not know that those with mental disabilities needed special and specifically directed care for each one individually. Those with a mental illness have been bullied, ridiculed, made fun of, and even at times beaten down for having that illness. They cannot help that they have that mental illness. They were born with it and do not understand where all the mistreatment of them comes from. Over time communities have understood this more. Doctors are now able to understand that these people with special needs actually have those special needs. Often times they just want to be treated like normal human beings and sometimes they can understand that. For many years people with a mental illness were cast away into mental hospitals, also known as insane asylums, and forgotten about. People wanted a perfect society to live in and sadly, that did not include these people with mental disabilities. Now there are camps for these special needs people, the Special Olympics, and special caregivers to help provide for and take care of these mentally ill people. People now are way more understanding and caring than they used to be. Now mentally ill people are not just sent away to rot in a lonely hospital. They can be cared for. And that is one of the best things ever. 
