How Has Our Perceptions and Actions on Mental Illness and Physical Disabilities Changed Through Time?

From English 2019

American horror is generally of about from literature, television, and movies, however, horror can be seen in many other ways. Atrocities like murder, rape, genocide, and war. The treatment of other human beings has never been mankind’s strong suit. The 19th and up to later 20th century were when mental illnesses and physical deformities were viewed as shameful, defective, and often dealt with in a gruesome, awful manner. Even today, there is a small remnant of those notions left. Affected individuals were usually locked, chained, bolted, tied; any number of things to “hide” them from the rest of society, or to “treat” their conditions. Alongside this, they were brutally tortured, beaten, shocked, starved, and numerous other things. Typically, mental institutions would conceal these details from the public. However, people who were aware of these occurrences chose to allow them to happen as they felt different people were strange and made them uncomfortable, except for a low number of sympathetic individuals. People felt the treatment of others who were thought to be ill or deformed was justified. Although, when a “normal” person goes through a similar experience, people are disgusted and upset; like they were undeserving of such horrific treatment.

On May 23rd, 1901 in Poitiers, France, a woman named Blanche Monnier was found starved, and covered in the collection of twenty-five years’ worth of filth. The floors were piled with uneaten food, vomit, feces, insects, and rats. The former young, healthy, and happy Monnier was unrecognizable until she was given food and bathed at a nearby hospital. Monnier was now forty-nine years old and a shocking fifty-five pounds. Her mother and brother were her perpetrators. Her mother didn’t agree with the poor attorney she wished to marry, so she locked her away. Both were arrested, but unfortunately, her mother passed away only fifteen days after, and her brother was acquitted shortly after as he never physically restricted her from leaving the room. Monnier, expectedly, never regained her sanity and experienced mental health issues for the rest of her life, where she lived in Blois Psychiatric Hospital until she passed away in 1913. The whole town was appalled by the way Monnier was treated and the conditions she was held in against her will. Citizens wanted both her mother and brother to rot in jail and were angry that her brother was released (Altered Dimensions). An article from The New York Times featured this story when Blanche’s mother passed away in prison, which shared the tragedy for all the United States to read and anger over.

Blanche Monnier was a seemingly normal person before she was locked away for over two decades, which resulted in her insanity. People who knew of this story were disgusted and horrified that someone could treat another person this way if they weren’t mentally or physically considered to be "normal". What many didn’t realize at the time was mentally or physically abnormal individuals were treated in appalling manners every day, if not left to rot or be held against their will in the cruelest prisons.

There used to be what was called a “disappointment room” for example, which were rooms on the top floors of homes for families to lock their deformed children in that they were

embarrassed by. Families didn’t know how to properly care for a disabled child because there wasn’t adequate “information concerning how to help and treat these children” (Lewis par. 3). Parents were blamed for their child’s situation, so to avoid the public humiliation they kept their child hidden from society. Usually wealthier families could afford to have an extra room built for the sole reason of keeping their children who were slightly different a secret. Laurie Dumas and her husband discovered a disappointment room in their house at Rhode Island. The house was occupied by a prominent judge of the town and his wife, with no history of a child from them, despite Laurie’s efforts searching. The only hint of a child she could find was a mention of a little girl named “Ruth” on the judge’s gravestone who passed away at the age of five.

A woman named Dorothea Dix was a reformer for the improved treatment of mentally ill affected individuals, fought for bizarre and inhumane practices, and cruel handling to be put to an end in psychiatric hospitals. She sent a memorial to the legislators of Massachusetts recounting her personal observations of the brutal, uncivilized conditions hospital patients were kept in hoping to persuade the legislature members to make a change. Patients were put “in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens” and “chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience” (Dix par. 5). Furthermore, there have been several instances where she has witnessed “blows inflicted, both passionately and repeatedly” to patients (Dix par. 21). She describes several individual’s atrocious living conditions, such as one who has been chained and caged for seventeen years, and one man who no longer has much use for his limbs from lack of movement for so long. Dix’s belief is that it is to the fault of legislation for the continued malpractices in psychiatric hospitals which “perpetuates and multiplies these abuses,” and that it is their responsibility to put a stop to it (Dix par. 7).

Dix was one of the few people who were willing to fight against the ongoing mistreatment of mental institution patients. The majority of people had turned a blind eye to the torment and abuse, and others were cruel enough to execute it, such as the doctors, nurses, administrators, and scientists. Not to mention the families of the individuals who had to bare these monstrosities would admit a loved one to a psychiatric hospital and leave them behind.

In 1946, Life magazine published an article which revealed the inner mistreatment of patients in Pennsylvania’s Byberry and Ohio’s Cleveland State through some frightening photos for America to see titled as “Most U.S. Mental Hospitals are a Shame and a Disgrace” by Albert Q. Maisel. Maisel begins his article by mentioning the countless reports of abuse, and patients deaths due to beatings received by caretakers. Yet these accounts of abuse and murder are “hardly the most significant of the indignities we have heaped upon most of the 400,000 guiltless patient-prisoners of over 180 state mental institutions” (par. 8). Maisel discusses the low living conditions of many of the patients, where they are fed a “starvation diet,” and are forced to sleep on bugs, blankets, or the mere cold floors (par. 9). Usually, patients had little to no clothing to wear, typically only an old and dirty nightgown. A Pennsylvania hospital attendant writes that on one day the doctors, and nurses are given “prime rib roast beef with gravy, broiled potatoes, roast corn on the cob, bread with butter, salad of cucumber, lettuce and celery, apple-apricot pie and coffee, tea, iced coffee, iced tea, or milk,” while patients receive “hard boiled eggs, lima beans, beets, white bread without butter and milk or black coffee” (par. 54).

Maisel points out that thousands of patients are constantly restrained in some fashion, “thick leather handcuffs, great canvas camisoles, muffs, mitts, wristlets, locks and straps and restraining sheets” (par. 10). He also mentions what are called “lodges”—filthy rooms without

beds with feces covering the floor. The attendant to patient ratio could be up to a shocking 1:400, which led to a rise in drugging, restraints, and seclusion to ease the work. A governor even admitted to the atrocious conditions patients were kept in, since “our cows in the hospital barns get better care then the men and women in the wards” (par. 12). Maisel states by 1940, as many as 404,293 people had already been crammed into buildings built to hold only 365,192.

As you can see, thousands of patients at this time were poorly treated, often times abused or even killed due to the beatings or harmful practices they inflicted. Many were treated as slaves, required to work for years on end with the minimal amount of food. The photos of these patient’s living conditions reminded Americans of the victims of the Holocaust and the way Nazis would treat the Jewish population. Albert Q. Maisel, Dorothea Dix, and others helped reform and change the way psychiatric hospitals would go about “fixing” these patients.

Americans viewed mentally ill or physically disabled individuals as a menace to society who could offend normal people by their looks or behavior. Some people didn’t know how to handle certain individuals, so they locked them up in a disappointment room, or admitted them to a mental institution to pass the responsibility on to someone else. Suffering individuals had almost no freedom and were poorly treated with no respect or dignity. These people went through confusion, distress, confinement, cruel experiments, beatings, and so much more. Throughout American history there have been many events that looking back on are horrifying to people now. Thankfully, ill or disabled people in American society today are given proper care and treatment and far more support and kindness that earlier generations couldn’t have dreamed of.

Citations:

1. Dix, Dorothea. “Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts.” Boston: Munroe & Francis. 1843. Web. 14 March. 2019. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470564/

2. “Girl Kept In a Dungeon Twenty-five Years Because She Was True to Her Sweetheart.” The New York Times. 9 June. 1901. Web. 14 March. 2019. http://altereddimensions.net/main/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/NYT1901_Blanche-Monnier-350x1024.png

3. Lewis, Brandon. “No More ‘Disappointment Rooms!’” Tandem Life. 15 September. 2008. Web. 14 March. 2019. http://tandemlife.blogspot.com/2008/09/no-more-disappointment-rooms.html

4. “Mademoiselle Blanche Monnier – the girl who was locked in a dungeon for 25 years.” Altered Dimensions. 7 June. 2013. Web. 14 March. 2019. http://altereddimensions.net/2013/mademoiselle-blanche-monnier-girl-imprisoned-in-dungeon-for-25-years-france

5. Maisel, Albert Q. “Most U.S. Mental Hospitals Are a Shame and a Disgrace.” Life. 6 May. 1946. Web. 14 March. 2019. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/lobotomist-bedlam-1946/