
In recent years, the question of the treatment, or rather mistreatment, of patients within psychiatric hospitals has been brought up many times. It is often brought into question if psychiatric hospitals, which are meant for the treatment and rehabilitation of people with various forms of psychiatric illnesses, are in fact abusing and mistreating its patients. In Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad-House”, Bly provides several examples of the dangers that women specifically suffer from within psychiatric hospitals. Many have argued that psychiatric hospitals induce violence within their facilities by placing patients in a position where they are subject to greater threats rather than personal safety. Historically, psychiatric hospitals are known to subject patients of a lower socio-economic group to harsher treatments in comparison to patients of a higher socio-economic group. Within Sarah M. Berstresser’s article titled “The Death of Esmin Green: Considering Ongoing Injustice in Psychiatric Institutions”, Sarah points out that when patients are mistreated and are placed in a position where they are a danger to themselves by the institutions, whose creation was to care for these patients, it parallels “historical forms of oppression”.

Within “The Death of Esmin Green: Considering Ongoing Injustice in Psychiatric Institutions”, Sarah Bergstresser’s main argument is of “systematic inequality” throughout psychiatric institutions. In Erica Lilleleht’s article titled “Progress and Power: Exploring the Disciplinary Connections between Moral Treatment and Psychiatric Rehabilitation”, she explores the evolution of psychiatric treatment over several years. For example, she points out “prior to the late 18th century…psychiatric techniques existed primarily as technologies of repressive control and punishment.” This form of injustice within psychiatric rehabilitation relates to form of inequality that Sarah M. Bergstresser speaks of when she brings up the idea of injustice within psychiatric institutions. Sarah also hint towards the argument that “populations targeted by stigma and prejudice” may be at greater risk to mistreatment in psychiatric institutions.

Within “Ten Days in a Mad-House” Nellie Bly explores the various situations that psychiatric hospital patients are put through. Nellie goes so far as becoming a patient herself at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum. Throughout the book, Nellie Bly exposes just how the nurses within the Women’s Lunatic Asylum greatly mistreat and abuse the patients. Although, Nellie Bly does not go in depth and explains the reasons why the nurses use cruel treatments on the women, Sarah’s article provide some incite as to why institutions such as the Women’s Lunatic Asylum far too often mistreat its patients. In “The Death of Esmin Green: Considering Ongoing Injustice in Psychiatric Institutions", Sarah provides Esmin Green’s death as an example of how psychiatric institutions oppress and belittle its patients. Within this article, Sarah M. Bergstresser explains how such institutions invoke power over its patients and in turn marginalize its patients. In Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Mad-House”, Bly recounts how the women are abused to the point that they are stripped of their own bodies. Such instance is when Nellie recounts that the nurses bath the patients as if they were children. The patients are left without any sense of personal choice or even security. As Sarah explains, “this oppression becomes cyclical, where loss of rights feeds a discourse” that eventually leads to “further loss of right”. Psychiatric institutions become power structures where the institution itself oppress the patients and dehumanize them which in turn provide them more reason to continue the abuse.

It is fairly easy to discover just how psychiatric and rehabilitation institutions lose all respect for its patients. However, this is not always the case. In “Progress and Power: Exploring the Disciplinary Connections between Moral Treatment and Psychiatric Rehabilitation” Erica Lilleleht makes several point that psychiatric treatment has evolving from being strictly repressive to being more open and understanding of each patient. Erica Lilleleht explains “with the passage of time and the development of discipline, however, psychiatric rehabilitation's focus on the observable individual becomes so exclusive and so detailed…” In this example, Erica brings one’s attention to that fact in recent years psychiatric rehabilitation has strayed away from cruel punishment. Psychiatric hospitals now treat their patients with care and include treatments that actually acknowledge its patients as people that deserve respect and integrity. 

In truth, psychiatric hospitals and mental illness treatment has been cruel in the past. People with mental illness have been oppressed by the very institutions, which were designed to provide their treatment, for far too long. However, in recent years, many efforts have been made to ensure that patients do not experience that same mistreatment as before. It is because of people such as Nellie Bly who witness these intolerable acts in person, to then report on and bring awareness to the treatment of patients. 
