PSY 2012 Chapter Notes - Chapter 12: Community Mental Health Act, Dorothy Dix, Electroconvulsive Therapy
Document Summary
Throughout history, the ways most societies treated individuals who manifest deviant or abnormal behavior are considered barbaric by contemporary standards. In europe, asylums for chronically mentally ill became somewhat commonplace around the 1400s and existed for approximately 300 years. These asylums were mostly dark, poor-ventilated dungeons in which seriously mentally ill people were usually shackled to the walls, often naked, left to stand in their own excrements. In addition to their exposure to fresh air, the patients were given better food and their caretakers were required to interact with them more humanely. The patients" response was overwhelmingly positive, to the point where he convinced the french government to convert all asylums in france. Dorothy dix a nurse who worked in a prison setting, who found herself in conflict with the idea of imprisoning mentally ill people with actual prison inmates.
