

Throughout Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House, there are many historical contexts to the piece that help shape the text itself.  Research texts help the reader to better understand the history of mental illness and why patients were treated the way they were.  Mentally ill patients have been brutally treated throughout history and the treatment gets worse the further back a researcher looks in history.  Majority of the population were uninformed and ignorant about mental illness and the way the mentally ill were treated.  Many reformers focused on educating the population about the harsh treatment to the mentally ill which resulted in major reforms.  Using sources of research, the reader is able to better understand the culture in which Bly’s piece was created.  

Looking at the source “The History of Mental Illness: From Skull Drills to Happy Pills” by Allison M. Foerschner, the reader gets a better understanding of the beginning history of the mentally ill starting in the Neolithic times.  The first treatment of the mentally ill was with a procedure called “trephining” (Foerschner, 1).  This extremely brutal treatment was driven by the idea that the mentally ill were driven by evil and demonic spirits.  They drilled a hole into the patient’s head and believed that in doing this the evil spirit would be released, thus curing the patient.  Comparing this treatment to the treatment described in Bly’s piece makes Bly’s experience look much better.  The reader can see how the nurses and doctors in Bly’s piece do not think they are treating the patients poorly and might even believe they are being too nice to them, compared to hundreds of years ago.  Other ancient treatments of the mentally ill were in religious ways like prayer, exorcisms and other rituals trying to drive out the evil spirit.  In history, mentally ill patients were not looked at as human beings but rather objects that did not belong.  In most ancient civilizations mental illness was directly linked to evil spirits or a supernatural forced inflicted on a patient as a form of punishment for something they did.  When people believed there was an evil spirit within someone it lead them to disconnect the person from who they are and view them only as an evil spirit, wanting to exterminate the spirit.  In Bly’s experience the patients were treated as humans far more than patients have previously been treated in history.  This article shows the reader why Bly and the patients around her had been treated so poorly and it is because all throughout history the mentally ill were treated brutally and in inhumane ways.  Treating the patients poorly is all people have known since the beginning of time.  

In Bly’s piece the goal of the asylum was to help the patients and to, although it did not seem they were trying that hard, ultimately cure them.  When the first asylums opened the goal was not to help the patients but rather to provide a place for families to abandon their members because they were ashamed of them.  The mentally ill were shunned from their communities to “take away the burden from the family” (Foerschner, 2) and to keep peaceful lives throughout the community.  They were looked at as a burden and only that.  They had unqualified workers and the patients were treated as animals.  They were not allowed visitors or to leave their rooms, they were given small amounts of food and were forced to sit in their own waste as they weren’t given bathrooms or showers.  Some asylums put the patients on display and charged the public to watch them act crazy.  Comparing this treatment to the treatment in Bly’s experience it seems as though Bly was at a hotel.  They were treated like actual human beings, being allowed to have visitors and were given walks, showers and food.  Families sent their members there for them to receive help and to get better, not because they were ashamed.   In the early 1800s, a humanitarian movement was spread across the Atlantic to the United States.  Major reforms were put in place to start treating the patients with kindness rather than abuse and improve the living conditions for them.  Bly would probably disagree about being treated with kindness and improved living conditions but coming from the asylums before her time it would make sense.  Sure, they were not treated as the mentally ill are now treated but their living conditions were very much improved from the major historic times.  There were medical advances and new laws put into place that ensured a better life for the mentally ill.  Looking back on history it is clear to see why Bly was treated the way she was.  All anyone had ever known and practiced before was extreme brutality and until reforms were started no one knew any better.  

According to “Historical Perspectives on the Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill” by Linda Farms Kurtz, up until the 1800s many people were unaware of the harsh living conditions of patients and people began advocating for a change.  The first American state mental hospital opened in 1773; this hospital was the first asylum dedicated to providing treatment for the mentally ill and by the middle of the 1800s, 30 asylums for treatment of the mentally ill had opened.  There were many people advocating for help for the insane in the early 1800s.  One notable advocator was Dorthea Dix. Dix worked endlessly to get a federal law passed to give the proceeds of a federal land sale to building public mental institutions.  Her efforts did not work to the federal level but she caught many people’s attention and it resulted in many state public institutions to be founded.  Many people who were institutionalized began speaking out about the harsh treatment inside the hospitals, like Bly.  Bly and Dix are similar in that they were aiming to make people aware of the harsh living conditions given to the mentally ill and their goal was to make a change.  Dix was a known advocator throughout the United States and can be assumed was someone for Bly to look up to.  Dix was known on a Federal level and Bly was inspired by her to do her experiment in the asylum.  Both activists shared the same views and both stood for something greater than themselves.  They both wanted to help others and went through a lot to do help them.  Both women caught many citizen’s attention and from this, many state associations were organized to concern the citizens of the institutions so they would argue for correcting the abuse.  These two women share a connection and a role in changing the asylums to be a better, helping place.  The patients were the main focus and making sure they were treated correctly, and most of all helped, was their goal.   

Both articles directly relate and correspond to Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House.  There were many reformers like Dix and Bly whose primary focus was to inform and educate the public on mental illness and the treatment of the mentally ill.  The main point of Bly’s piece was to expose the harsh living conditions set by the insane asylums.  Reading the articles is helpful when reading Bly’s piece because it sets the tone for what Bly is about to walk into.  Knowing that before these harsh mental institutions was mainly just death for the mentally ill provides good insight on why these hospitals were so harsh.  They were harsh because people did not understand or care for the mentally ill.  Prior to the time of Bly’s experience, the mentally ill had not really been treated like humans.  People put them into a different category and did not even partially understand what was wrong with them or how to help them.  Many believed they were simply incurable and therefore treated them as useless human beings. The way the mentally ill were treated in the 1800s is clear and true after reading both pieces.  It is clear why Bly and many other activists took a stand and spoke out against these conditions.  Both pieces relate and show to reader with real examples of how harsh these mental institutions used to be. 
