Asylums in the United States are very important and in theory they would be crucial to the clinically insane. The idea is that people would go into asylums, be diagnosed, then treated of their mental illness. In reality, during the time period which Nellie Bly investigated the asylums, doctors did not have the know-how to diagnose or treat their patients. People would often avoid sending family members into asylums if they had a mental illness because these institutions were notorious for being shady and harmful. The doctors were experimental and just “treating” their patients with a guess or hunch of what might cure them, hoping for the best. Often times patients would come out of the asylum in a worse condition than they had gone in with. Patients were malnourished, abused and oppressed. These institutions were not kept sanitary and often would paint a picture of a perfect backdrop for a horror flick. The assistants were incompetent and harmful, and the patients’ lives rested in the hands of their overseers. Because the doctors were not well versed in the interworking of the mind like they are in modern day psychology, they would take guesses and make very broad diagnoses for their patients. The lack of care and actual rehabilitation in asylums is shown by Nellie Bly in her work on the asylums. This can be seen the moment she walks into the asylum when the doctor and his nurse don’t give the patients the time of day to hear their stories, and flirt with one another instead. In Nellie Bly’s “Ten Days in a Madhouse”, The patients there are not treated properly and what is even worse is these people aren’t even diagnosed, they are put in and have no real explanation for what they are in for. They are just deemed insane for how they might act or how intelligible they are. This becomes obvious when Nellie is in the asylum and sees how the whole place operates. She knows that this is a dark place with little to no power in the hands of the patients admitted. The doctors care very little for the patients themselves and don’t make efforts to actually cure them. It is almost as if the patients are all potential test subjects to figure out how the mind works or they are just objects and they are not actual people. The asylums do nothing beneficial to the insane except for possibly provide sanction for them. Even then one must ask the question, is the cost of protection worth the potential and probable harm that may come with it?

Throughout history, mankind has always been in awe of the human brain. In ancient times gruesome operations were performed to relieve mental illness and all it would do was leave a patient brain dead. This harmful nature of the treatment of mental illness had remained for a very long time, and one example of this can be seen from a court case in 1927. The Buck v. Bell court case specifically shows how incapable Asylums are of managing their patients and giving them the proper diagnosis and care to put them back into society. In this court case the name of the prosecuted is Carrie Buck. She was charged with being an imbecile and a second generation looney. She was sentenced to be sterilized to prevent the passing down of the “insane” traits that she carried. The public feared and disapproved of the clinically insane and they believed that if they took away the ability to reproduce and pass the gene they might also remove the insanity with it. It was believed that if their ability to reproduce was removed that the patient might be able to be released to the public and eventually become self-reliant. In Carrie’s situation she received this sentence just because she had a family history of insanity. She was only said to be an imbecile and there was no legitimate diagnosis of her “insanity”. The doctors at the time were not as well versed in mental disorders as they are in modern day medicine, and they could only act like they knew what they were doing and see if the treatment (if one could even call it that) would work. Carrie had to suffer at the hands of the irrational and ignorant theories of the so called doctors. Many patients during this time had gone through similar circumstances. They were charged with being insane but had no legitimate reason or diagnosis that proved they must be hospitalized. They just had to accept their fate and face what could be the rest of their lives in an asylum. These poor souls were not at fault for what they were sentenced to, rather it is the doctors and the court who is to be held accountable for such actions. They acted like they knew how to deal with patients and that these asylums could actually nurse the broken back to health and hopefully back into society. The doctors should not have acted like they knew what they were doing and respected the lives of those who were clinically insane and at their mercy. If anything one could even go far enough to call these doctors mad scientists for they were committing horrifying treatments and tests on subjects to see if it would work like grasping at straws. They would try anything to see how the patient would react in hopes of a cure revealing itself.

Doctors may have been a huge issue when it comes to treating the patients and making sure that they are actually insane, but the attendants also played a hand in the irresponsible treatment of the patients. These were the people that would wash their clothes, feed them, make sure they were behaving, guard their rooms at night, and keep the patients on track. This is a job where they are the ones in charge and that power can get to their head. Some employees would beat patients, abuse them, and a slew of other atrocities that these patients did not deserve. Just because a person is deemed insane and is at one’s mercy does not mean that they are any less human and should be treated in such ways. There is a quote that refers to this and shows perfectly what kind of an issue that this was in the institutions.

“It was not the first time that Victoria’s attendants had been found deficient. Thirty years earlier, a public inquiry into the colony’s first asylum characterized its attendants as immoral drunkards, at whose hands the patients suffered ‘all the coercion and punishment usually had recourse to in madhouses.’ In the decades between these two public inquiries, asylum advocates came to similar conclusions about attendants more than once.” (Pg 84, Monk)

This quote refers to the irresponsibility of the assistants and attendants that worked inside of the asylum and “took care” of the patients residing there. These people would go to work drunk and take out any anger or frustration they had on these patients, and because asylums were typically isolated from society there would be no repercussions for these guards. Not to mention that their victims were locked up, deemed insane, and it would be the word of a crazy person against that of a respected attendant. This made the institutions an even less desirable place once this news got out. Not only had this happened, but as stated the issue was recurring and found multiple times over the decades. Those who are supposed take care of the mentally ill in this place are the ones possibly doing the most harm to them. This is not what should be going on, and the lack of respect for the people in these structures is just disappointing.

The asylums were not fit for anyone to live in yet because the insane were considered lesser by the populous, it was not that large of an issue for the people in charge to sweep it under the rug. No one would want to go anywhere near the asylums so what would they care to look into if there were any issues and if the people were being treated properly. Until Nellie Bly had done her research and investigation on insane asylums, people had no idea what really went on in them. Nelly showed how unforgiving and inhospitable the doctors and attendants had made the place, and how much of a living hell it truly was. Undeserving patients being taken advantage of or abused daily, and doctors partaking in experiments that were in no way rational. These are not conditions in which one would find a cure for their mental illness. In fact, these are the conditions where one might develop illness and actually become mentally insane.
