Why Mental Illness Has Changed American Views On Mental...

Mental illness has continually been part of life in the United States, albeit a part of American life that is not often discussed. Insane asylums for housing the mentally ill developed later during colonial America. New scientific ideas and the continuing influence of the Enlightenment led to further usage of insane asylums, where a widely-used architectural style developed. Commonly known as Kirkbride or linear plan asylums, these asylums were popular in the mid-nineteenth century, and were massive, intimidating structures built to impress visitors while providing care to the mentally ill housed inside. This actual style was predominant from the 1850s to just after the Civil War and their creation and fall from popularity changed†¦show more content†¦This thesis will bridge the gap between these two theories. It will also address the theoretical division in the historiography. The architecture of Kirkbride asylums suggests that there was a dual purpose in the creation of th ese massive, imposing buildings; they were created to treat the mentally ill, but the idealistic writings of superintendents of this period did not reflect the true reality of asylum life, and thus control played a large aspect in the building and workings of insane asylums in mid-nineteenth century America. There have been scholarly works published about both Kirkbride asylums and insane asylums in the United States in general. Dr. Henry M. Hurd, a Superintendent at John Hopkins Hospital, wrote a four-volume book called The Institutional Care of the Insane in the United States and Canada in 1916, which was one of the first comprehensive scholarly works on mental hospitals in the United States. His view is important, as he admonished the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (AMSAII), a group of superintendents over insane asylums, to change its name and focus, as it had changed since Kirkbride’s time. He gave histories of these ment al hospitals, and his figures are used through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Another earlier source on this subject is Margaret McCulloch’s â€Å"Founding the North Carolina Asylum for the Insane.† Her article focused on North Carolina and