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For centuries, supposedly "civilized" societies looked upon psychologically disturbed humans as subhumans, to be tortured or locked away and forgotten. As a result, the history of the treatment of psychological disorders and insanity makes a grim story. For hundreds of years insanity was associated with the supernatural, and the psychologically disturbed were thought to be possessed by demons or the devil. One "cure" that dates back to the Stone Age involves cutting a hole in the patient's skull to let out the evil spirits. In Europe, during the 17th and 18th centuries hundreds of thousands of persons were tortured to "bring them to their senses." If that did not work, they were burned or hanged.
In 1793, during the French Revolution, Philippe Pinel brought about a startling new reform at the Bicˆtre Asylum in Paris. He released the patients from their iron chains and called for "wiser and more moderate restraints." He reported that a number of previously violent patients, once freed of chains, became relaxed and talked quite agreeably with officials. Although he was not the first to do so, Pinel attempted to classify the different types of psychological disturbances and to suggest that different forms of insanity required different types of treatment. He showed the importance of keeping case histories and approaching each patient as worthy of individual treatment. A major breakthrough for the mentally ill in the United States came in 1909 when Clifford W. Beers founded the National Committee for Mental Hygiene. Its purpose was to improve conditions in mental hospitals, encourage psychiatric research, enlarge the facilities for the care of the mentally ill, and make the public more aware of mental health. Until recently, some modern treatments for psychological disorders included practices as brutal as many of those seen in asylums before Pinel. Psychosurgery, involving permanent destruction of portions of the brain, left thousands of patients with altered personalities, forced them to lead lives of limited potential, and deprived them of normal experiences. Great strides are now being made to provide better treatment of the psychologically disturbed. There has been a trend during the last couple of decades to get patients out of institutions and back into society. |
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