History

The very first known insane asylums, or psychiatric hospitals, was established in the Arab world, specifically in Baghdad (918 CE) and Cairo. Before these institutions, individuals with mental illness were often cared for by their families.

Treatments

Bleeding and Purging #1

Mental illness was viewed as a disease of the body rather than the brain, and patients were often prescribed weeks of forced bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea in order to purge the body of its ‘melancholic humours’. Caustic substances were also applied to the skin, to make it burn and blister.

OTHER FORMS

• Chaining patients to walls
• Twenty-four-hour restraints in beds
• Sedating patients by spraying them with water
• Using patients as exhibits for the public’s entertainment
• Sending women to institutions because they were “trouble” for their husbands and families
• Forced Sterilization (1907)

2024 Lawsuit

Suit blasts 4 state psychiatric hospitals for violent conditions, ‘unconstitutional’ policies in New Jersey

• Refusing to discharge patients cleared for release violates their due-process rights equal to getting a drink of water
• People are being kept involuntarily in the facilities as in-patients, according to the complaint, even when they have been approved for release.
  • The suit contends that some people are forced to wait months, if not years, for release. When they are released, it is often to an inappropriate placement just to get out of a hospital, any medically required meds they normally have such as HIV/AIDS, they are only given three days worth and left on the streets or quick halfway house at most. While 90% of the patients acquire HIV/Aids after they are incarcerated. 
  • Elton John advocates for just this thing, in the US this is the leading cause of HIV/AIDS Death or reincarnation so the patients can get their meds again.
• The suit seeks a host of remedies, including an order requiring the timely discharge of people who the court has ordered no longer need to be hospitalized. Also sought are monetary penalties when the state does not release individuals within 60 days.
• The lawsuit alleges that in one case a patient at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital was sexually assaulted by a staff member while another staff member stood guard and then the patient was forcibly restrained for a time.
• Another Trenton patient suffered lasting damage from a traumatic brain injury after being assaulted repeatedly by several other patients, while the staff did not intervene.
• An assault at Ann Klein led to five stitches, while one at Greystone resulted in a shattered eye socket.
  • “Imagine living in an environment where even the most basic choices are taken away from you — when to wake up, when to go outside, when to have a drink of water — and, in place of psychiatric treatment, you face both boredom and violence on a daily basis,” said Bren Pramanik, a Disability Rights New Jersey attorney.