Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House takes a deeper look into what it was like to be a patient in an insane asylum during the late 19th and early 20th century. Due to lack of knowledge about mental health disorders and treatments for them, patients were subdued to different treatments and facilities that would be seen as inhumane and unacceptable today. However, at the time the practice of treatments like sterilization and committing any person that seemed a little off, were widely accepted at the time that Bly wrote this book. “Psychiatry, Psychology, and Human Sterilization Then and Now: “Therapeutic” or in the Social Interest?” and “Nervous Breakdown in the 20th Century American Culture” give insights into the treatment of patients and treatments used on them that are mentioned generally in Bly’s story. They help to explain how the practices towards mental health patients were affected by the lack of knowledge of the time period. 

“Psychiatry, Psychology, and Human Sterilization Then and Now: “Therapeutic” or in the Social Interest?” looks into one “treatment” that was used on mental health patients. Sterilization is a form of permanent birth control, it can take the form of a hysterectomy in females or vasectomy in males. This practice became very popular during the late 1800s and early 1900s. They tried to claim that insanity would be relieved in about three months time if the procedure was done (Dolan 100). As more and more immigrants came into the nation, psychiatrists and psychologists became more and more observant of the traits that they did and did not like in people. During this time, a lot of people were also admitted to various mental institutions due to reasons such as “hysteria,” which could have actually been many different things. People were basically locked up because medical knowledge was not advanced enough to recognize different diseases instead of just clustering them all together as one problem. This was very common in females especially after they had children. Nowadays, they would have been diagnosed as having postpartum depression. Even when these sterilizations were ruled illegal, doctors still performed these procedures. They had no respect for the patients or their rights. Patients were picked based on factors that they could not control such as their race, gender, mental disabilities, and socioeconomic standing. Many people were made unable to have children because mental health professionals of the late 19th century and early 20th century lacked the necessary knowledge of how to diagnose and treat various mental health issues. 

Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House takes a look at what it was like to be a patient in an asylum during the time period discussed earlier, the late 19th century and early 20th century. The story discusses the experiences of a journalist who goes undercover as a patient in an asylum in New York. It goes into the different treatments and experiences. Bly writes about how patients were locked up and then forced to stay in freezing temperatures. It was also described how patients were choked. “Psychiatry, Psychology, and Human Sterilization Then and Now: “Therapeutic” or in the Social Interest?” takes a deep look at one of the various treatments that mental health patients were subjected to during the time period. Although it is not necessarily described in Bly’s story, it is similar to how heinous the treatments that Bly did explain were. The treatments that were described in both the book and article give insight into the lack of knowledge that healthcare professionals possessed during the late 19th century and early 20th century. 

 “Nervous Breakdown in the 20th Century American Culture” has the main point of introducing how the idea of the nervous breakdown became so prevalent in society. As the piece goes on, it goes into how doctors used this as an explanation for anything that was found to be wrong housewives of America, especially after they had given birth. Doctors used nervous breakdowns as an excuse to commit young mothers and use the rest treatment on them because they were unaware of diagnoses such as postpartum depression. The rest treatment consisted of a patient being forced to just lay in bed all day and do absolutely nothing that was seen as straining on their brains. This treatment was known to cause people to lose their minds because they would basically just stare at the ceiling and walls of their room or cell that they were committed to all day. Nowadays, a person would not be committed to an insane asylum for something like a nervous breakdown. They would probably be given some type of medication or be told to change something in their lifestyle, like their stress levels and the amount of sleep that they get.  

In Ten Days in a Mad-House, Bly alludes to how people, mostly women, were committed to insane asylums for reasons such as hysteria. Being committed for reasons like a nervous breakdown as discussed in the article,“Nervous Breakdown in the 20th Century American Culture,” are very similar to being committed for hysteria. Hysteria can be described as one feeling different, strong emotions. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, people were a lot more private about the things that they were feeling. So, when someone would finally break down because of everything piling up, it was seen as very wrong and that they were going crazy. This happened often to young mothers because of how their hormones were affected by giving birth. Both of these diagnoses reflect the lack of medical knowledge that doctors had at the time. Everything would be different if doctors had known about the different mental health problems that these things could actually be. If medical professionals had the correct knowledge, not as much of the population in the late 19th century and early 20th century would have been committed to insane asylums. Both the article and the book look into the mistreatment and how general diagnoses caused people to be sent to insane asylums for things that could have been cured at home if they had the knowledge and technology that we have at our disposal today. 

“Nervous Breakdown in the 20th Century American Culture” goes into detail about how the idea of nervous breakdowns came into play in society starting in the late 19th century and how people were committed to insane asylums because of them. “Psychiatry, Psychology, and Human Sterilization Then and Now: “Therapeutic” or in the Social Interest?” discusses one of the multiple treatments that was used on patients residing in insane asylums. These are both related to Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad-House because they all discuss the mistreatment of patients and how not all of the patients should have necessarily have been in the insane asylums, but doctors did not know any better at the time. These two articles help explain why so many people were committed to the insane asylum during the time period that Nellie Bly was writing her story.  
