These days, the topic of human rights in America is regarded with a sense of accomplishment. When the average American thinks about human rights, they might think of our country's pursuit toward equal treatment, or of how "everyone here is treated fairly". Images of Abraham Lincoln may come to mind, or perhaps the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. Racism, LGBTQ oppression, feminism--these are the words and phrases that accompany the idea of human rights. And I must admit, my thinking was along these lines until I read a certain book and my curiosity was sparked. The book I'm referring to is the autobiography of Susanna Kaysen, entitled Girl, Interrupted. In her autobiography, Kaysen skillfully describes the hardships of being in a mental hospital for two years of her life. Upon first reading the book, the topic of human rights does not jump out at you--but it is there. Kaysen describes only one mental institution: McLean Hospital. Clean and moderately well staffed, McLean was renown for its lovely grounds and appeal to the wealthy. But it had its fair share of human rights violations, taking the form of misunderstanding, mistreatment, and overmedication. In her autobiography, Kaysen describes staff that willingly overmedicated patients, stripping them of their individual identity in order to make them fit for society. Kaysen writes about how a doctor saw her for twenty minutes and decided she should spend two weeks in McLean Hospital, which ended up being closer to two years (Kaysen 71-72). She also writes about the lack of understanding between staff and patients and the frustrating, unproductive process of analysis: “My view, now, was of a wall, an off-white, featureless wall. No trees, no Melvin [her therapist at the time], patiently looking at me while I looked away. I could feel his presence, though, and it was cold and hard. The only things he said were ‘Yes?’ and ‘Could you say more about that’” (188-189)? This description of analysis shows how patients were far from being understood by their therapists, but instead felt lonely and misunderstood. Kaysen also describes the overuse of drugs on patients,
The resident could put us on that stuff too, in an
‘acute’ situation. Once we were on it, it was hard
to get off. A bit like heroin, except it was the staff
who got addicted to our taking it.
“You’re doing so well,” the resident would
say.
say.
That was because those things knocked the
heart out of us. (87)
heart out of us. (87)
These are scenes from the movie Girl, Interrupted, showing the extremely unproductive treatment methods that bordered on torture.
Okay, so at one hospital we've got overuse of medication and therapy that doesn't work. Maybe some unwarranted violence between staff and patients, but not really anything to worry about, right? Like I said, this just sparked my curiosity. So, I started digging into what I found to be a very dark and troubled past of American Psychiatry.
FILTH AND NEGLECT
I first stumbled upon Shame of the States, an exposé written by Albert Deutsch, intended to bring attention to overcrowded and underfunded mental hospitals across America. Another reporter, Albert Maisel, wrote an article entitled "Most U.S. Mental Hospitals are a Shame and Disgrace". They took these photographs:
These photographs are just a small taste of the filth and neglect that existed in mental hospitals in the early 1900s.
BEYOND BEDLAM
Aside from seriously disgusting and unhealthy living conditions, so-called "treatment" methods closely resembled torture. For evidence of this, we turn to Beyond Bedlam, a compilation of stories, prose and poetry by women who were abused and mistreated by the mental institution in the 1900s (Grobe 1-229). Given the label of “mentally ill”, these women recount the horrifying violations of human rights that they witnessed and experienced while they were mental patients. Most of these women began as only emotionally disturbed, and being committed to a mental hospital caused them more trauma than they ever would have experienced outside of one. Their “crazy behavior” was their reaction to being abused or mistreated at some point in their lifetime, and they were committed for an attempt at coping with their pain, a necessary step toward mental health. But their story did not end well: “They were women who had been abused in their youth; many had been shocked, overmedicated, secluded for years. They were the women who never made it out" (Grobe 36). This quote, written by Dorothy Washburn Dundas, describes elderly women in a mental institution that had been driven to madness by treatment, until at last they were left in a state of catatonia (36). They had lost the fight against the mental institution, and at last succumbed to the illnesses that they never really had. Another contributor to Beyond Bedlam, Catherine Odette, writes about being drugged and suffering through electroconvulsive shock therapy: “[…]I lived in state hospitals, receiving treatment for my psychiatric disability. I received drugs as part of my treatment. The levels of Thorazine and Stelazine I was taking are now considered toxic, even by some of the most conservative prescribing physicians. My mind was a toxic dump[...]” (75). She goes on to describe how the drugs made her “almost incapable of thought”, and how she was forced to take the drugs if she tried to refuse them (75). She then writes of the horrors of electroconvulsive shock, restraint, and seclusion, “My spine would take that classical unnatural arc[…]The seizures shattered most of my teeth[…]The next two treatments, restraint and seclusion, were often combined. I was locked in a room. This room had no bed[...]I was forced to use the floor of that room as my toilet" (75-76). There should be no doubt as to whether this sort of treatment could help anyone. The amount of drugs, electroconvulsive shock therapy, restraint and conclusion were traumatizing and painful enough to drive anyone to insanity, no matter how stable they were to begin with. And someone who was hurt and felt insecure and unsafe already, someone who needed care and a safe and pleasant environment, would be shattered beyond repair by such abusive treatments. Dundas continues, “Those treatments, restraint and seclusion, did not cure my psychiatric disability[...]They are inhumane[...]They degrade and damage people, causing their own set of trauma reactions. They escalate anger and so-called acting-out behavior. They don’t work! They are wrong! They should be illegal!” (77). Here, Dundas explains that treatments such as restraint and seclusion are not only ineffective in curing mental disabilities, but actually can cause behaviors that psychiatrists label as symptoms of mental illness. A vicious cycle would begin: treatments caused patients to exhibit behaviors that are classified as insane, therefor more treatments were administered, and patient continues to display the behaviors. And this cycle never ended well for the patient.
THE FLAWED PHILOSOPHY
For many patients whose cases have been examined thus far, violations of their rights began when they were diagnosed as mentally ill. At that point, any hope for finding healing vanished. To explore exactly what it means to be a mental patient, ex-patient Jeanine Grobe goes so far as to redefine “mental illness” in her book Beyond Bedlam. As one who has experienced the injustices of the mental health institution and survived to tell about them, she has a very bitter yet accurate view of the psychiatric system. Grobe writes in her book Beyond Bedlam:
“Mental illness.” The words were always meaningless to me.
“You have to understand, you have an illness,” the doctors would say.
The way I experienced life, myself, the world is an illness. My perceptions, sensations, thoughts, feelings, memories, my dreams. All illness. (71)
From Grobe’s perspective, it can be seen that all individual identity was stripped from a patient when they were diagnosed as mentally ill. Her every thought process and feeling was discounted and invalid due to the fact that a doctor thought she was mentally ill. Healthy reactions to hurt and trauma that she had experienced were explained away as illness, with no room for understanding or sympathizing. She became a disease requiring medication rather than a person requiring healing. Prompted by this injustice, Grobe boldly explains her own definition of her so-called “illness”:
[…] There is no such thing as mental illness[…]What people call “mental illness” is usually someone’s attempt to use the natural emotional release healing process. The attempt is sometimes productive but is often misinterpreted and cut off by others. The notion of “mental illness” is a fabrication designed to keep us from our real selves and to keep us from ending oppression. There is no “normal,” no line that separates “crazy” people from “sane” people. (139)
So according to Grobe’s idea about mental illness, what right have psychiatrists to diagnose and prescribe an illness that doesn’t exist? Why are mental institutions stopping short this “natural emotional release healing process”, and instead choosing to prolong instability by casting labels upon troubled people, forcing them to think of themselves as mentally insane? These people are not insane, they have been severely emotionally injured and are struggling to cope, but their “right to cope” is being taken away from them by a practice of treatment that is based on theories that have yet to be proven, remaining in practice for many reasons besides a desire to help people who need it (140).
The question arises then: just how affective can mental hospitals be? To test the effectiveness of mental hospitals, Dr. Rosenhan and his colleagues admitted themselves to mental hospitals, claiming that they had heard voices, but that was their only claim to insanity (Rosenhan's Experiment). Once admitted, they acted completely normal, even informing the staff that they felt fine and would like to be released (Rosenhan's Experiment). This video provides the details of their excursion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnHvK6lJOO8
Violations of the rights of mental patients have taken many forms, including but not limited to: their right to privacy, liberty, security of person, informed consent, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought. Autobiographies, compilations, articles, poems, and other works of literature provide many cases and personal testimonies of each of these violations, a cry for justice from people whose genuine underlying issues have been ignored, and who have been “treated” to the point of traumatization. Although the abuse of the mentally ill is more subtle than it has been in the past, the momentous misunderstanding of the true care that is required has been overlooked. Until the whole of society can redefine mental illness as an attempt to heal, psychiatry will remain an abusive and ineffective practice.
The question arises then: just how affective can mental hospitals be? To test the effectiveness of mental hospitals, Dr. Rosenhan and his colleagues admitted themselves to mental hospitals, claiming that they had heard voices, but that was their only claim to insanity (Rosenhan's Experiment). Once admitted, they acted completely normal, even informing the staff that they felt fine and would like to be released (Rosenhan's Experiment). This video provides the details of their excursion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnHvK6lJOO8
Violations of the rights of mental patients have taken many forms, including but not limited to: their right to privacy, liberty, security of person, informed consent, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought. Autobiographies, compilations, articles, poems, and other works of literature provide many cases and personal testimonies of each of these violations, a cry for justice from people whose genuine underlying issues have been ignored, and who have been “treated” to the point of traumatization. Although the abuse of the mentally ill is more subtle than it has been in the past, the momentous misunderstanding of the true care that is required has been overlooked. Until the whole of society can redefine mental illness as an attempt to heal, psychiatry will remain an abusive and ineffective practice.
Links to websites that lend further information:
Works Cited
Whitaker, Robert. Mad in America. 1st ed. New York: Perseus Publishing, 2002. Print.
DeMain, Bill. "Ten Days in a Madhouse: The Woman Who Got Herself Committed."
mental_floss. 2011: n. page. Web. 23 Feb. 2014.
Bly, Nellie. Ten days in a mad-house. . New York: Ian L. Munro, 1887. eBook.
Belknap, Ivan. Human Problems of A State Mental Hospital. 1st ed. New York: McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Inc., 1956. Print.
Deutsch, Albert. The Shame of the States. 1st ed. New York: Arno Press, 1973. 188. Print.
Kaysen, Susanna. Girl, Interrupted. 1st ed. . New York: Vintage Books, 1994. 167. Print.
Gosden, Richard. Punishing the Patient: How Psychiatrists Misunderstand and Mistreat
Schizophrenia. 1st ed. Netley, South Australia: Griffin Press, 2001. 203. Print.
Grobe, Jeanine. Beyond bedlam: contemporary women psychiatric survivors speak out. 1st. ed.
Chicago: Third Side Press, 1995. Print.
Rosenhan's Experiment. Narr. Banyard, Taylor, and Rosenham. VEA Australia, 1973. Web. 5 May 2014. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnHvK6lJOO8>.
