
When one thinks of someone with a mental illness in the present time, they tend to think of someone who for the most part is pretty normal but needs help. All the same when we think of the ways to treat these people, we more than likely think of properly dosed medication or therapy and so on. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. When we take a look farther back in time, around the late 1800’s, we will be able to see the cultural and historical differences and how they affect the way mental health patients and their illnesses were dealt with.

In today’s world, there are endless possibilities and choices for treating a mental illness. The amount of research and advances in technology have made dealing with these illnesses much less painful and much more humane than it used to be. Scientists have put forth great effort into further understanding how the brain works and what exactly causes these problems within the minds of the ill. Of course, if you were to compare the treatment styles of today to the styles of years back in what we would consider ancient times all the way into the late 1800’s you’d be surprised at what you saw. 

By looking back throughout time, you can see the evolution of treatment methods for mental illnesses. Attempts at treating mental illnesses date as far back as 5000 BCE where they would try drilling holes into the top of patients’ heads to try to let the evil out that was clouding their mind (Foerschner, 1). This was obviously a very primitive method of treatment and was entirely based on the ignorance of the people during this period in time. It wasn’t until the middle ages that treatments began to make a little more sense. At this point, patients were treated with actual medication as well as utilizing hospitals. This is also around the first time we start to see the use of asylums for the mentally ill. These asylums were run by the churches and for the most part were only available to those who were wealthy enough to afford to be treated. A lot of these asylums stuck to the ideas that frequent attendance at church would do a great deal in relieving the illness that burdens the patient. This was due to the fact that the majority of people believed that mental illnesses had to do with being possessed by the devil or some demon. This carried out up until the 1700s. During this time, people drifted further away from actually treating the illnesses and more or less just trying to hide them. People diagnosed with a form of mental illness were put into asylums, which had become a places where people dropped off ill patients to be forgotten. They were kept in the asylums in which they were more or less contained rather than treated. The employees worked to keep them under control and tolerate them until they died. This only progresses to get worse as time goes on into the 1800s. This is the time period where things get pretty out of hand. Asylums were over populated with patients which lead to unsanitary living conditions. The staff members were mostly untrained and unchecked people who were not qualified to handle these people. This lead to multiple accounts of staff members abusing the patients to the point of serious health issues being caused. They would do things such as spitting on patients, verbally abusing them and sometimes going as far as to neglect patients entirely. This was due to the fact that the employees working these asylums didn’t see the patients as people, therefore they didn’t treat them like people (Foerschner, 3). 

This is where we enter the time period in which “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman takes place. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story that takes place in the late 1800s. It is about a woman who is struggling with a mental illness and relies on her husband to get her the proper help that she needs. The only problem with this is the husband goes about her treatment entirely wrong. He keeps the narrator locked in a room with little to no human contact besides when he comes to visit her. This inevitably leads to her condition’s deuteriation. Except from a third person point of view her condition seemed to be improving. She was eating better, she was sleeping more and her personality improved. Of course, behind the illusion she was getting worse and worse. She had developed this hatred for the wallpaper of the room she was kept in. she asked multiple times for her husband to change it only for it to fall on deaf ears due to him thinking she was just acting crazy again. At night, she began seeing a woman trapped behind the wallpaper trying to escape. It wasn’t realized just how bad she was becoming until late one night the husband was awoken by a noise that he decided to investigate. He opened the door only to find his wife clawing at the wall in attempts to tear down the wallpaper, leaving her fingers torn apart.  

To go into deeper analysis of her illness and the way she behaves would show some truth behind her “treatment” causing a worsening effect on her condition. It is suggested that John (the narrator’s husbnd) is a sort of controlling force for the narrator throughout the story. It is said that John represents the daytime that the narrator can’t stand (Johnson, 225). This daytime hatred represented by John as well as the wallpaper is proven by the absence of both when night time falls. One of the final topics to be explined within the work is the idea that the narrator’s night time hallucinations are actually embodiments of her deep inner rage. This would mean that the woman trapped behind the wallpaper grabbing onto the bars, is actually the narrator herself consumed with this inner rage. This shows the way she was cooped up, kept locked away enhanced her illness greatly (Johnson, 226).

Therefore, when you think of someone with a mental illness in the present time, they tend to think of someone who for the most part is pretty normal but needs help. All the same when we think of the ways to treat these people, we more than likely think of properly dosed medication or therapy and so on. this however was not always the case, if one were to analyze the past, around the late 1800’s, and the methods used back then, we will be able to see the cultural and historical differences and how they affect the way mental health patients and their illnesses were dealt with. All throughout time mental health was taken as more of a joke or as a supernatural occurrence. There was no one who took the time to look intensely and find out what it is that is causing the problems and how to fix it. It wasn’t until recently that anyone had made any progress in finding out proper treatments for mental illness
