Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
In 1900, Clifford Beers, a Yale graduate and young businessman, suffered an acute breakdown brought on by the illness and death of his brother. Shortly after a suicide attempt, Beers was hospitalized in a private Connecticut mental institution. At the mercy of untrained, incompetent attendants, he was subject to degrading treatment and mental and physical abuses. Beers spent the next few years hospitalized in various institutions, the worst being a state hospital in Middletown, Connecticut.
In 1908, Beers changed mental health care forever with the publication of A Mind That Found Itself, an autobiography chronicling his struggle with mental illness and the shameful state of mental health care in America. The book had an immediate impact, spreading his vision of a massive mental health reform movement across land and oceans.
1962- Counterculture author Ken Kesey's best-selling novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is based on his experiences working in the psychiatric ward of a Veterans' Administration hospital. Kesey is motivated by the premise that the patients he sees don't really have mental illnesses; they simply behave in ways a rigid society is unwilling to accept. In 1975, Kesey's book will be made into an influential movie starring Jack Nicholson as anti-authoritarian anti-hero Randle McMurphy.
•1930's: Insulin shock and metrazol shock therapies and surgical technique of lobotomy were developed.
•1920's: Fever therapy was introduced in mental hospitals.Creation of an artificial fever which elevates the body temperature which are used to treat disease. Sometimes they are followed with the Cold Sock Treatment.
•1920s-1930s: Over-crowded institutions. The Great Depression plunged state hospitals further into the custodial mode. Great numbers of indigent and aged people entered state hospitals.
•1930's- 1945: Conditions in state mental institutions deteriorated as a result of Great Depression, financial hardships and the resource and personnel demands of the war. Extreme overcrowding was common.
1927: The New York State Mental Hygiene Law is enacted. The DMH is given almost all responsibility for the care and treatment of the mentally ill, the developmentally disabled, and epileptics.
•1900s-1920s: Psychiatrists sought to re-establish their medical credentials and adopted an aggressive therapeutic stance.
•Patient numbers had doubled from 13,434 in 1890 to 31,280. New York State now had the largest number of institutionalized people with mental illness in the nation.
•Late 1930's-Early 1940's: Electroconvulsive therapy, which replaces insulin and metrazol shock therapies, was introduced into the United States.
Around the turn of the 19th century, Europeans introduced a new approach to the treatment of the mentally ill known as “Moral Management.” This approach was based on the belief that the environment played a vital role in the treatment of the mentally ill.
•The federal Hill-Burton Act, which allocated monies for state hospital renovation and construction, was enacted.
•Mental Health Act of 1946. Provided funding for research into causes, prevention and treatment of mental illness.
The 1940's & 1950's brought about the development of tranquilizers for use in the mental health field. During this time Psychiatric journals were being published that included new information regarding mental health practices and care guidelines for the mentally ill.
1949Australian psychiatrist J. F. J. Cade introduces the use of lithium to treat psychosis. Prior to this, drugs such as bromides and barbiturates had been used to quiet or sedate patients, but they were ineffective in treating the basic symptoms of those suffering from psychosis. Lithium will gain wide use in the mid-1960s to treat those with manic depression, now known as bipolar disorder.
Early 1900s-The primary treatments of neurotic mental disorders, and sometimes psychosis, are psychoanalytical therapies ("talking cures") developed by Sigmund Freud and others. Society still treats those with psychosis, including schizophrenia, with custodial care.
Early Twentieth Century: Progressive Reform
Progressive Era reformers believed that mental illness was the product of environmental factors and that it was both preventable and progressively serious. These beliefs gave rise to the Mental Hygiene Movement, which as characterized by the psychopathic hospital, child psychiatry and outpatient clinics. All of these innovations were intended to prevent the emergence of mental illness or to provide early treatment designed to avert serious mental disorder.
•1965: Medicare and Medicaid were established. Both contained provisions for mental health treatment.
•1909: The National Committee for Mental Hygiene (NMCH) was founded and its headquarters established in Manhattan. The NCMH spearheaded the mental hygiene movement, which was pessimistic about curing mental illness but convinced that it could be prevented.
Mid-1960s: Many seriously mentally ill people are removed from institutions. In the United States they are directed toward local mental health homes and facilities. The number of institutionalized mentally ill people in the United States will drop from a peak of 560,000 to just over 130,000 in 1980. Some of this de-institutionalization is possible because of anti-psychotic drugs, which allow many psychotic patients to live more successfully and independently. However, many people suffering from mental illness become homeless because of inadequate housing and follow-up care.
The development of psychiatric drugs such as Thorazine and new tranquilizers reinforce psychiatric confidence in the effectiveness of outpatient treatment and their ability to cure mental illness. Less need for shock treatment, restraints and seclusion rooms. Able to begin to develop and sustain intensive individualized treatment programs. Nation’s mental health inpatient population was reduced by the drugs.
•"Social Milieu Therapy" became increasingly popular. It represented a move away from surgeries. The institution once again became the focal point of therapy. Milieu therapy called for developing a permissive and rich social environment for the chronically mentally ill. It emphasized personal hygiene, attractive surroundings, bright colors, light, attractive meals, group activities (poetry, music, singing, and discussions). Music therapy preceded ECT. Superficially, milieu therapy resembled nineteenth-century moral treatment; however, it lacked its predecessor's emphasis upon self-discipline.
Mid-1950s A new type of therapy, called behavior therapy, is developed, which holds that people with phobias can be trained to overcome them.