What were the mental health organizations during the 18th and 19th centures in the U.s?

Answer 1

Mad houses or insane asylums. There wasn't much 'organization' to these things back then. In those days, if you couldn't care for yourself, or if you were 'different', you would be put into one of these 'homes' and left there for good. No one even came to visit.

Answer 2

From 1701 to 1901 the organizations in the now USA were not there . A wise mama did more for her own than the society. Mysticism prevailed and the intelligent depressive of that time saw the pioneer life as a way for escape or at least for feeling better about life. In the big cities the mentally ill without any help became animals chained and locked up . If London had second story balconies for viewing of the mentally ill so too would the colonies. I know wars and geography allowed many to escape mental pain. At the end of this time period Sigmund Freud advanced ideas that had slowly developed in your time period. His ideas were shocking to most people. None the less getting good and drunk was well practiced. If you look at the primitive tribes today you can see how some groups acted back then . There is also a study of mental issues being greatly reduced in times of war and physical hardships. I hope this will be of some use in seeing how the mentally ill can be helped today . I do suggest that you look at what was done in Germany in 1939.

Answer 3

Organized? Not very well, I'm afraid. As with many other social problems in those days, the church held sway. Mental institutions were little more than dungeons and just to give an example of the enlightened attitude toward mental illness was the "spinning chair therapy". Basically the chair is supended from the ceiling via a pully and tackle that allows the patient to be spun at high speed,
and that is all I know about that. Another method
of treatment was ice cold baths, I suppose to show the person out of their illness. then, as today the stigma of "insanity" now called mental illness, is
socially unacceptable. In fact today we fill our homeless shelters with mentally ill whereas, at least in the past we gave the insane a roof over their heads. If you are obese or you have a mental disorder you are open game for every kook, nut case,
redneck, and sheriff in the county and the next.
Many are veterans of our war expansion policy and are treated like sewer. The talk shows pathetically
use them for themes centering on isolating or killing them. Reagan took their checks away so that many, with nowhere to turn, commited suicide. Our stingy and no-nothing elected representatives who thrive at the public trough routinely brush off the problems of metal illness. The courts are draconian in their sentencing of these poor, wandering and suffering outcasts and refuse to acknowledge any connection between mental illness and resulting crime.

Answer 4

There was no concept of mental health in the 18th and 19th centuries. There was mad and not mad. If you were mad they threw you in an institution till you were either deemed cured or died. Typically you died first.
The institutions were effectively prisons. Madness had a social stigma. Freid was the first to popularize mental health problems as something that wasn't terminal and/or of supernatural origin.

Answer 5

they were called witch trials, the stocks, and very often the execution of the subject, untill in the 1800's sometime "assylums" became all the rage, where they simply locked "patients" away from public view...it got marginaly better in the twentieth century with medications like lithium and the likes of that...but all of mankind is still in the dark ages as far as how to truly treat mental illness.

Answer 6

There were none. People who were insane (or who were believed to be insane) were imprisoned right along with the criminals. There was an insane asylum in early Williamsburg, Virginia, U.S.A. that you might want to look up.

Answer 7

if you were considered mad they would throw you into an insane asylum, which was more like a prison, you were treated as a prisoner, and labotomies were often given to cure a defect in the brain.