In the 19th century, insane asylums were nothing like they are today. In this time people with mental illnesses were treated horribly, as if they weren’t people. In Ten Days in a Mad-House Nelly Bly exposed the awful things happening to women who were deemed mentally insane and sent to this asylum. Through this source and many others from this time I argue that once one was committed to an insane asylum in the 19th century, ones hope of ever being let out were extremely low. This was due to the lack of help and support these people got as well and the total disregard the people in charge of these institutions had towards all of their inmates; the force they used against them and the “treatments” they used that could on more occasions than not be deemed torture. This all could be used as evidence as to why these people were never able to get out of these institutions.

A lot of the treatments these asylums used, at the time, might have seemed like it would be helpful in fixing the problems they were faced with but now as we look back on it, it’s hard to understand the logic they used when coming up with these ways to “help.” A lot of the torture these people went through after being committed put an even bigger strain on their mental stability. “What, excepting torture, would produce insanity quicker than this treatment?... see how long it will take her to go insane. Two months would make her a mental and physical wreck” (Bly 293.) Even Bly herself noted that if she were left to spend any more time in that institution she would most definitely go mad. The way these women were treated was torturous and at times, while reading, it was hard to imagine these things she wrote about being real life accounts. As well as in Modern Persecutions, or Insane Asylums Unveiled Packard writes about the gruesome torture that one of the inmates went through that ultimately drove her to suicide. “She was choked, pounded, kicked, and plunged under water, until well-nigh strangled to death… Poor Mrs. Cheneworth could not await this retribution, but was driven to seek the only defense within her reach, death! Yes, death -the most dreadful of all evils- was chosen rather than such a life as she was doomed to endure under the rule of this Inquisition.” (Packard 20-21) The way Mrs. Cheneworth was treated was so awful that she could not stand it any longer and eventually took her own life because she could not see her life ever improving. These women were not being helped in any way. These asylums were set up for people to send those with mental illnesses away so they didn’t have to deal with them. They were not places for rehabilitation or healing. They caused more problems than they solved leaving it impossible for anyone committed to get the help they needed to reenter society forcing them to stay trapped in these torturous institutions.

These asylums were not set up with the ideals that they would be bringing people in to help them. No one working at these institutions had any regard for the inmates what so ever. They didn’t see them as if they were people they only saw them as a bother or an inconvenience to them. “In England, John Walton, in his analysis of admissions to the Lancaster Asylum in the 18402, reported that the majority of patients had been employed prior to the onset of their illness. He concluded that ‘most of those who were admitted and remained within its walls were not so much ‘inconvenient people,’… as impossible people in the eyes of families, neighbors, and authorities… The count asylum provided relief for desperate families rather than an easy option for the uncaring or irresponsible’” (Torrey, Miller 319.) During this time people were sent to these public institutions that were funded by tax payer’s dollars because their ‘loved ones’ didn’t want to have to deal with them. By doing this they were paying to send them off to be tortured by people whose salary was paid by the loved ones of the inmate. These asylums were run by the nurses in charge of the inmates in day to day activities, it’s evident that the doctors and other management either had no control over what was done or they didn’t care enough about the wellbeing of their patients to do anything to stop the awful things that would happen to the sick people in their care. The way they treated them was in ways that allowed them to exercise their power and superiority over them, in no way were they doing any of the things they did in order to help the patients get better or feel comfortable in any way. These weren’t prisons, these people were not sent here because they did anything wrong on purpose, they shouldn’t be treated as if they are criminals. But unlike criminals who were sentenced to a specific amount of time, the people committed to insane asylums were sent there under the pretenses that they would be there indefinitely; they would be released when and if they were able to function in society This was almost never the case which usually led to them being trapped for the rest of their lives.

 Separation of the mind and body was a common way doctors would treat mental illness. They would focus on the treatment of the physical symptoms rather than the illness itself. This was never successful because it was equivalent to the saying ‘putting a band aid on a bullet hole.’ This was another reason why patients at these mental asylums were never well enough to be released. More specifically in all women institutions, male doctors had a harder time treating these patients because they had a harder time understanding what these women were going through. “Women’s bodies often presented a challenge to male doctors, and their misinterpretation of them is perhaps revealed by the large number of illnesses both mental and physical that were attributed to amenorrhea, dysmenorrhea and other reproductive problems” (Spooner 61.) During this time people didn’t understand that a lot of the things they deemed to be unnatural or cause for commitment to an institution was just a normal and natural thing that happened to these women for example, period cramps. Their inability to treat the problems correctly set these people up for failure. They went to these institutions in the hope of getting better so they could one day be released but what they didn’t know before they got there and what they found out soon after being committed was that there would be no way of them getting out of these places sane or alive.

 It took society a long time to fully grasp the concept of mental illness and during the 1800’s their understanding was very miniscule. They understood it enough to have institutions set up in order to get them the help they needed but their ability to follow through with their plans was not successful because they didn’t truly understand what mental illness was and how to treat it. The treatments they used and the way they treated the inmates in their care were the leading reasons that these patients were never well enough to be checked out of these asylums. 

   