The view of mental illness amongst the family members of the afflicted has been a wide range over the course of human history. Sources will be used to draw similarities between actual events and their representation in “Flowers for Algernon” and “Ten Days in a Mad House” . The topic of influence will be the mistreatment of the mentally ill, the use of isolation and the negative effects that stem from it. 

First thing to look at is the broad stroke of these issues, things like the treatment of the mentally ill throughout time and in the time period of these novels. Very early on humans recognized the mentally ill as being different from everyone else. The Egyptians for instance, would relieve the mentally ill from hard physical labor and instead would have them do things like painting, drawing, and dying cloth. They tried to have the afflicted feel as a part of society much as everyone else was.

 The English on the other hand started a trend that would ripple through the ages. They saw these people as freaks and abnormalities in society and sought to remove them from their lives all together. They achieved this by placing the sick in housing that was far removed from any and all society and disguised their disgust and lack of sympathy for the sick by claiming these “retreats” were supposed to expose them to the outdoors away from the stress of society. This is not to say that the notion of getting away from the city is a bad thing but rather that the detachment closely resembles the way people treated criminals. These people that had done nothing wrong except for neurological problems that could not be helped are now thrown away to the isolation of the dreary woods on top of the almost prison like structure of asylums. Often times there would be guards, guard towers, huge walls, even barbed wire to “protect” the afflicted from the outside world but what's interesting is that anyone with any reason can see it was less keeping the world out and more keeping them in. Take for instance the asylum referenced in Ten Days in a Mad House. The island is home to not only the asylum but actually a penitentiary and a workhouse (A place for petty offenders to be housed and work their sentence away). The idea is crazy to think of that a more “barbaric” society had a more humane treatment of the sick compared to a supposedly more advanced people. The notion of separation is supported in the novel by the author noting it as the “Lonely Island”. Another place this theme shows up is quite literally the plot of yellow wallpaper. The main Character is stuck out in this house in the middle of nowhere and the husband is just trying to put her out of his life but under the guise of “respite in solidarity”. 

What's quite ironic is that research suggests that any human that is alone or removed has a higher chance for auditory or visual hallucinations. Humans are social creatures and when that factor is removed the mind often supplements it. This can force normally sane people to experience and develop psychosis. In an article done by the BBC they interviewed a person who had been placed in extreme isolation for an extended period of time and the resulting effects of her incarceration. The woman was detained by Iranian troops and held in an isolation room. She began to see lights and shapes only to look and see them not there. The next thing to come was the auditory hallucinations which manifested themself first as her hearing a woman screaming and didn't realize that it was her own voice.  They go on to talk about a study done in the 60’s where a university took people and put them in a sensory deprivation chamber where they had visors over their faces to restrict what they could see. The subjects also had gloves on so they couldn't feel, a constant hum of air conditioners to drown out the possible sound and all air was filtered of any smells at all. The study found that after a matter of hours most patients became restless and would talk or sing to themself trying to supplement any stimulation possible. Later mood swings set in and they became quite stressed. The final observation before many were pulled out due to concern for their health is the hallucinations. People started seeing the same shapes and lines that the girl in Iran saw and even had more vivid hallucinations such as dogs or glasses walking down a street. This is evidence of normal people, screened before going in for any form of mental issue or psychosis that under isolation circumstances quite literally lost their mind. The subjects even reported that it was hard to shake the mindset after being taken out of the chamber and back into the regular world. While these circumstances were made quite extreme to speed up the results and effects, these conditions were on a slightly lower magnitude in the asylum referred to in Ten Days in a Mad House. The asylum practiced a certain form of sensory deprivation that was known as hydro therapy where in the afflicted was placed either on their own accord or often times forced, into a tub of either steaming hot or icy cold water. The patients would be bound and restricted from moving and often would have a towel placed over their eyes so they couldn't see. Things like this have been proven to cause psychosis making it an ineffective treatment of the possibly sick. 

Another good example of isolation being used on someone is the other text used in this paper, Yellow Wallpaper. In this book the unnamed protagonist, if you can call her that, is placed in a house in the country under orders of her husband where she was deprived of all meaningful human contact who slowly goes mad. The reader gets to experience what it's like first hand for someone to go insane in this kind of isolation situation. She goes through all of the stages that the article mentions from extreme emotions, stress, all the way to hallucinating that there was someone in the wallpaper. This is a striking example in literature of all of these things put into play. It took someone who was completely normal besides being stressed out and made them into a schizophrenic split personality disorder person. 

One thing to point out is the things doctors looked for in mentally ill people at the time . It could be anything from mild to acute stress, irritability, talking to oneself, of course hallucinations and the classics such as split personality, mood swings, schizophrenia and depression. These things could be anywhere on the chart for severity and it was up to other people's discretion to turn the afflicted in for the most part. These things are all symptoms that stem from isolation and deprivation. Another interesting fact is that in a report from American Psychology Association is that today’s teenagers showed equal to more stress than their equivalents in the 50’s. It is crazy to think that what people considered extreme stress levels in the past (which attributed largely to the number of patients admitted)  is now considered to be a normal living condition. An interesting comment relating to that is in Ten Days in a Madhouse when the narrator speaks about how the most sane acting people were treated as the craziest and most unstable. How would anyone be able to properly make a diagnosis in this setting where that is the air of these patients treatment?

In conclusion, the patients admitted to these facilities were at best misdiagnosed and mistreated. The deplorable treatment of these patients with the amount of isolation they were subject to could cause any sane person to go mad. This fact supported by the first person account in Yellow Wallpaper as her isolation drives her to insanity and the multiple clinical trials performed that support the claim that the isolationism in these asylums were detrimental to any of the patient's recovery. It's also possible that these conditions caused them further affliction.
