Mental Health In The 1800s

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Mental Health is a term that refers collectively to all diagnosable mental disorders. Mental disorders are health conditions that are characterized by alterations in thinking, moods, or behaviors associated with distress and impaired functions. The history of mental illness includes ambivalence, violence, torture, fear, discrimination, and suffering. These aspects contributed to the movements to improve the treatment and service of the population. Four major reform movements took place the first is the moral treatment movement. This movement began in the early 1800s and was introduced by William Tuke. Tuke believed if people was taken out of everyday life circumstances that they could rehabilitate their moral deterioration. Two other influential people were Dorothea Dix and Horace Mann and they agreed that mental illness could be treated by relocating the individual to an institution where they could receive both somatic and psychosocial treatments in a controlled environment. The building of the institutions defined the moral treatment era. Nearly every state had an institution, which served the purpose of the treating the mentally ill at an early stage so they could restore the mental health and keep it from becoming chronic. The institutions were built and was used for untreatable patients but over time the quality of care deteriorated in public institutions. They were overpopulated and had funding problems. …show more content…
This movement was based on the belief that mental illness could be cured if it was identified and treated early. The two important people during this movement were Adolf Meyer and Clifford Beers. This approach was incorporated with the newly emerging concept of public health. Electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy were invented. Theses treatment were occasionally effective, but the early treatments had not prevented patients from becoming chronically ill.