Random Life in a 19th Century Mental Institution Was Basically Torture (13 items)

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  (#12) Your Life Would Follow A Strict Routine

  Asylums became overcrowded in the 19th century, and the structure of treatment shifted away from individual care and more towards herding people. Life at the asylum was based on routine: patients would get up in the morning, leave their rooms, and be ushered into common spaces.

  Sometimes they would be paraded around the grounds, in between strictly scheduled communal meals and chores.
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  (#7) You Could Be Strapped To The Tranquilizing Chair For Days

  An invention of Dr. Benjamin Rush, the tranquilizing chair was designed to completely immobilize a patient for extended periods of time. Patients were bound to the contraption by the hands, feet, torso, and head, and left to sit in it for hours or days. The theory behind the device was that reducing circulatory activity would help cure insanity.
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  (#1) You Could Get In, But You Couldn't Get Out

  The large gothic buildings of asylums resembled penitentiaries in more ways than one. The windows were barred, the grounds fenced in, and the bedrooms were locked. A diagnosis of insanity said that you were not fit to take care of yourself, and thus you became a ward of the state, often whether you wanted to or not. And once you were in, it could be nearly impossible to convince the staff that you were sane.

  Nellie Bly recounts just such an instance in Ten Days In A Mad-House. In 1887, Bly feigned insanity to gain access to New York's Blackwell's Island Insane Asylum - she wanted to write about the conditions there. Upon her arrival in the asylum, she found that many of the patients seemed completely sane.

  One woman ended up there after her health gave way and her nephew ran out of funds. Other women simply didn't speak enough English to make themselves understood. Bly herself was unable to convince the doctors of her own sanity. It was only after her friends came to take her that she was able to secure release. She described the asylum as "a human rat-trap."
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  (#8) You Could Be Forced Into A Straitjacket

  While far from an ideal solution, the adoption of the straitjacket was actually a humanitarian effort - the reformers of the 19th century used it to replace irons and chains. Before this time it was not uncommon for the insane to be chained to beds in poorhouses, or end up in prison similarly restrained.

  The straitjacket gave patients a greater degree of freedom while still preventing them from hurting themselves or others.
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  (#11) You'd Have Lots Of Company

  Before the institutionalization push, the asylum patient population in England was around 10,000. By the end, it was over 100,000.

  This surge in the number of diagnosed mentally ill individuals led to massive overcrowding in almost all of the institutions. Such overcrowding made the moral treatment model unfeasible. Asylums switched gears from attempting to cure the insane to merely housing them.
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  (#9) You'd Probably Be There For Life

  There were very few real cures for insanity in the 1800s; people either got better on their own or they didn't. Most patients that entered asylums were considered chronic. Not only that, but it was ultimately up to the doctor to determine whether a patient was cured. If the doctor said the patient was still insane, they were stuck there no matter how hard they argued their case.

  Many people died in these asylums, which frequently had their own graveyards.

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