Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940

Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 PDF Author: Gerald N. Grob
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691656800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Gerald N. Grob's Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 has become a classic of American social history. Here the author continues his investigations by a study of the complex interrelationships of patients, psychiatrists, mental hospitals, and government between 1875 and World War II. Challenging the now prevalent notion that mental hospitals in this period functioned as jails, he finds that, despite their shortcomings, they provided care for people unable to survive by themselves. From a rich variety of previously unexploited sources, he shows how professional and political concerns, rather than patient needs, changed American attitudes toward mental hospitals from support to antipathy. Toward the end of the 1800s psychiatrists shifted their attention toward therapy and the mental hygiene movement and away from patient care. Concurrently, the patient population began to include more aged people and people with severe somatic disorders, whose condition recluded their caring for themselves. In probing these changes, this work clarifies a central issue of decent and humane health care. Gerald N. Grob is Professor of History at Rutgers University. Among his works are Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (Free Press), Edward Jarvis and the Medical World of Nineteenth-Century America (Tennessee), and The State and the Mentality III (North Carolina). Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940

Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 PDF Author: Gerald N. Grob
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691656800
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
Gerald N. Grob's Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 has become a classic of American social history. Here the author continues his investigations by a study of the complex interrelationships of patients, psychiatrists, mental hospitals, and government between 1875 and World War II. Challenging the now prevalent notion that mental hospitals in this period functioned as jails, he finds that, despite their shortcomings, they provided care for people unable to survive by themselves. From a rich variety of previously unexploited sources, he shows how professional and political concerns, rather than patient needs, changed American attitudes toward mental hospitals from support to antipathy. Toward the end of the 1800s psychiatrists shifted their attention toward therapy and the mental hygiene movement and away from patient care. Concurrently, the patient population began to include more aged people and people with severe somatic disorders, whose condition recluded their caring for themselves. In probing these changes, this work clarifies a central issue of decent and humane health care. Gerald N. Grob is Professor of History at Rutgers University. Among his works are Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 (Free Press), Edward Jarvis and the Medical World of Nineteenth-Century America (Tennessee), and The State and the Mentality III (North Carolina). Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940

Mental Illness and American Society, 1875-1940 PDF Author: Gerald N. Grob
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780608063942
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description


Mental Institutions in America

Mental Institutions in America PDF Author: Robert Golembiewski
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351505718
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 491

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Book Description
Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 examines how American society responded to complex problems arising out of mental illness in the nineteenth century. All societies have had to confront sickness, disease, and dependency, and have developed their own ways of dealing with these phenomena. The mental hospital became the characteristic institution charged with the responsibility of providing care and treatment for individuals seemingly incapable of caring for themselves during protracted periods of incapacitation.The services rendered by the hospital were of benefit not merely to the afflicted individual but to the community. Such an institution embodied a series of moral imperatives by providing humane and scientific treatment of disabled individuals, many of whose families were unable to care for them at home or to pay the high costs of private institutional care. Yet the mental hospital has always been more than simply an institution that offered care and treatment for the sick and disabled. Its structure and functions have usually been linked with a variety of external economic, political, social, and intellectual forces, if only because the way in which a society handled problems of disease and dependency was partly governed by its social structure and values.The definition of disease, the criteria for institutionalization, the financial and administrative structures governing hospitals, the nature of the decision-making process, differential care and treatment of various socio-economic groups were issues that transcended strictly medical and scientific considerations. Mental Institutions in America attempts to interpret the mental hospital as a social as well as a medical institution and to illuminate the evolution of policy toward dependent groups such as the mentally ill. This classic text brilliantly studies the past in depth and on its own terms.

Mad Among Us

Mad Among Us PDF Author: Gerald N. Grob
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439105715
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
In the first comprehensive one-volume history of the treatment of the mentally ill, the foremost historian in the field compellingly recounts our various attempts to solve this ever-present dilemma from colonial times to the present. Gerald Grob charts the growth of mental hospitals in response to the escalating numbers of the severely and persistently mentally ill and the deterioration of these hospitals under the pressure of too many patients and too few resources. Mounting criticism of psychiatric techniques such as shock therapies, drugs, and lobotomies and of mental institutions as inhumane places led to a new emphasis on community care and treatment. While some patients benefited from the new community policies, they were ineffective for many mentally ill substance abusers. Grob’s definitive history points the way to new solutions. It is at once an indispensable reference and a call for a humane and balanced policy in the future.

Mental Illness and Its Treatment

Mental Illness and Its Treatment PDF Author: National Institute of Mental Health (U.S.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Mentally ill
Languages : en
Pages : 16

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Treating the Mentally Ill

Treating the Mentally Ill PDF Author: Leland V. Bell
Publisher: Greenwood
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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The Mentally Ill in America

The Mentally Ill in America PDF Author: Albert Deutsch
Publisher: Holley Press
ISBN: 1443725676
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 576

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Book Description
THE MENTALLY ILL IN AMERICA A HISTORY OF THEIR CARE AND TREATMENT FROM COLONIAL TIMES By ALBERT DEUTSCH WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM A. WHITE, M. D., D. Sc., LL. D. Late Superintendent, St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington, D. C. Professor of Psychiatry, George Washington University 1946 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS NEW YORK Third Printing, 194, Columbia University Press, Ne w York FOREIGN AGENT OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, Humphrey Milford, Amen House, London, E. G. 4, England, AND B. I. Building, Nicol Road, Bombay, India First and second printings, 1937, 1938 Double day, Do ran Company, Inc. COPYRIGHT, 1937 BY THE AMERICAN FOUNDATION FOR MENTAL HYGIENE, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION by William A. White, M. D. ix AUTHORS FOREWORD xv CHAPTER I. PROPHETS, DEMONS AND WITCHES . . II. COLONIAL AMERICA THE OLD WORLD HERITAGE 24 III. COLONIAL PROVISIONS FOR THE MENTALLY ILL PUNISHMENT, REPRESSION AND INDIFFERENCE . ., . 39 IV. RATIONAL HUMANITARIANISM THE BEGIN NINGS OF REFORM .... - 55 V. BENJAMIN RUSH THE FATHER OF AMERI CAN PSYCHIATRY 72 VI. THE RISE OF MORAL TREATMENT . 88 VII. RETROGRESSION OVER THE HILL TO THE POORHOUSE 114 VIII. THE CULT OF CURABILITY AND THE RISE OF STATE INSTITUTIONS . . . 132 IX. DOROTHEA LYNDE Dix MILITANT CRU SADER . 158 X. MID-CENTURY PSYCHIATRISTS .... 186 XL CONFLICT OF THEORIES RESTRAINT OR NON-RESTRAINT 213 XII. THE TREND TOWARD STATE CARE . . . 229 XIII. STATE CARE EXODUS FROM THE POORHOUSE 246 XIV. PSYCHIATRY EMERGES FROM ISOLATION . 272 XV. THE MENTAL HYGIENE MOVEMENT AND ITS FOUNDER 300 vi CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XVI. HISTORICAL BACKGROUNDS OF MENTAL DEFECT . . . . . 331 XVII. CHANGING CONCEPTS IN MENTAL DEFECT 353 XVIII. INSANITY AND THECRIMINAL LAW . . 386 XIX. OUR COMMITMENT LAWS 417 XX. MODERN TRENDS IN INSTITUTIONAL CARE AND TREATMENT 440 XXI. TOWARDS MENTAL HYGIENE .... 463 BIBLIOGRAPHY 497 INDEX . 5 5 ILLUSTRATIONS PlNEL AT THE SALPETRIERE Frontispiece FACING PAGE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY HOSPITALS FOR THE MENTALLY ILL IN AMERICA . 68 BENJAMIN RUSH 76 DOROTHEA LYNDE Dix 160 THE ORIGINAL THIRTEEN ... 192 OLD METHODS OF RESTRAINT AND A MOD ERN SUBSTITUTE . . 224 CLIFFORD W. BEERS 304 HYDROTIIKRAPY, OLD AND NEW 448 INTRODUCTION TT IS with deep satisfaction that I introduce this important book to the reading public. If the lessons it teaches are understood and taken to heart by its readers, society will be the authors debtor. Mr. Deutschs book, the preparation of which has been made possible by the American Foundation for Mental Hygiene, might be described in a very few words by saying that it traces the evolution of a cultural pattern as repre sented by the way in which people through the years have thought and felt about the so-called insane. It is an exceed ingly illuminating presentation and because of the dramatic material with which it deals, it may well prove to be a spear head for the penetration of important social facts and the understanding of social processes which, presented with less appealing or less startling illustration, might fail to attract attention. It is altogether fitting that in the presentation of this extraordinary and important story of mans struggles with himself, the illustrations should be taken more particularly from their American setting. In this way the whole matter is brought home to us who live in this country and we see what has actually been taking place, more especially since earlycolonial days, and we can feel that we ourselves are a part of the whole story and that the victories that have been won and the ground that has been gained are assets of which we can avail ourselves. It is always an illuminating pro cedure to trace the path along which we have come, to be come acquainted with the historical forces that are driving us, and their directions, because after all we have to conquer, not by opposing these forces, but by conforming to them. Mr...

The Inner World of American Psychiatry, 1890-1940

The Inner World of American Psychiatry, 1890-1940 PDF Author: Gerald N. Grob
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description


Keeping America Sane

Keeping America Sane PDF Author: Ian Robert Dowbiggin
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501723804
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
What would bring a physician to conclude that sterilization is appropriate treatment for the mentally ill and mentally handicapped? Using archival sources, Ian Robert Dowbiggin documents the involvement of both American and Canadian psychiatrists in the eugenics movement of the early twentieth century. He explains why professional men and women committed to helping those less fortunate than themselves arrived at such morally and intellectually dubious conclusions. Psychiatrists at the end of the nineteenth century felt professionally vulnerable, Dowbiggin explains, because they were under intense pressure from state and provincial governments and from other physicians to reform their specialty. Eugenic ideas, which dominated public health policy making, seemed the best vehicle for catching up with the progress of science. Among the prominent psychiatrist-eugenicists Dowbiggin considers are G. Alder Blumer, Charles Kirk Clarke, Thomas Salmon, Clare Hincks, and William Partlow. Tracing psychiatric support for eugenics throughout the interwar years, Dowbiggin pays special attention to the role of psychiatrists in the fierce debates about immigration policy. His examination of psychiatry's unfortunate flirtation with eugenics elucidates how professional groups come to think and act along common lines within specific historical contexts.

Dementia Reimagined

Dementia Reimagined PDF Author: Tia Powell
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0735210918
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Now in paperback, the cultural and medical history of dementia and Alzheimer's disease by a leading psychiatrist and bioethicist who urges us to turn our focus from cure to care. Despite being a physician and a bioethicist, Tia Powell wasn't prepared to address the challenges she faced when her grandmother, and then her mother, were diagnosed with dementia--not to mention confronting the hard truth that her own odds aren't great. In the U.S., 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day; by the time a person reaches 85, their chances of having dementia approach 50 percent. And the truth is, there is no cure, and none coming soon, despite the perpetual promises by pharmaceutical companies that they are just one more expensive study away from a pill. Dr. Powell's goal is to move the conversation away from an exclusive focus on cure to a genuine appreciation of care--what we can do for those who have dementia, and how to keep life meaningful and even joyful. Reimagining Dementia is a moving combination of medicine and memoir, peeling back the untold history of dementia, from the story of Solomon Fuller, a black doctor whose research at the turn of the twentieth century anticipated important aspects of what we know about dementia today, to what has been gained and lost with the recent bonanza of funding for Alzheimer's at the expense of other forms of the disease. In demystifying dementia, Dr. Powell helps us understand it with clearer eyes, from the point of view of both physician and caregiver. Ultimately, she wants us all to know that dementia is not only about loss--it's also about the preservation of dignity and hope.