Politicians have shifted their focus to mental health reform following the recent spate of shootings. It is undeniable that the mental health system in the United States is in dire need of reform. Access to treatment is often prohibitively expensive, even for those with health insurance.
In comparison to the past, current approaches to mental health are far more advanced. Here are a few startling images to illustrate the conditions of asylums in the past.
1.Factors leading to admittance into a sanitarium in the 1800s, such as “laziness” and “masturbation for 30 years."
2. Vintage straitjacket.
3.Radium treatments in the 1900s could have been more damaging than beneficial to those who received it.
4.Administering electricity to the brain via Diathermia was a treatment method that could not be accurately predicted and posed a health risk.
5. Creepy wall art from an abandoned mental institution in Italy.
6.During the 19th century, physicians had a taste for saving sections of brains from their patients and preserving them in wax, for reasons that remain mysterious.
7.During the 17th century, a mask was employed on violent patients to prevent them from gnawing on others.
8.It used to be said that mental illness could be treated through a sauna. Here are a few patients undergoing it.
9.Tools for lobotomies.
10.This snapshot from a Spanish asylum in 1961 seems to be a representation of a cruel punishment.
If a rational individual were to be mistakenly admitted to any of these hospitals, I can only imagine that they would be deranged upon their release. Even looking at some of these therapies makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.