Mental Illness in the Victorian Era
Changes in Treatment among British Mental Health Professionals
Nov 10, 2009
Poems like Thomas Gray's “Elegy on a Country Churchyard,” mourned the changes occurring throughout the Victorian era. These changes caused many people to move from the countryside, where they had worked on farms, to the city, where they worked in factories. However, these changes in lifestyle also led to changes in thinking. Many of the changes were very beneficial.
Victorian Era Asylums
For example, many people began to change their thinking about mental illness. According to a report on "lunacy" published in the Westminster Review in 1845, the public at large seemed to have become more "enlightened and benevolent." This was due to an 1841 act that required the government to inspect every asylum. When one asylum in West Auckland was inspected under this act, the Parliamentary commission found that some of the residents had been chained to their beds at night and that many other asylums were "ill-ventilated," "deficient" and "dirty."
However, by the time Queen Victoria took the throne, medical professionals had begun to develop programs designed to help mentally ill people become healthy. Many counties and cities began to build more private and public hospitals for the insane. These new hospitals did not have cells with bars on their doors; according to the Commissioners' report, modern institutions were designed to "avoid everything which might give to the patient the impression he is in prison."
Poverty and Mental Illness
Doctors at the Bensham Asylum, for example, had come to believe that “the clean air and healthy situation of the suburbs” would help its patients overcome their problems. The doctors believed that people often became insane because they lived in bleak surroundings and did not have enough food to eat. Therefore, asylums were encouraged to provide nutritional food, a “moderate quantity” of malt liquor, and comfortable, warm bedding. Patients were provided with opportunities to exercise and bathe, and were sometimes “bled,” which was a process of releasing some blood from the body in a controlled way.
The change in attitudes toward mental illness may be exemplified by some of the work of the poet John Clare. The newspaper editor Spencer Hall visited him at Northampton Asylum. Instead of writing a scandal piece about the conditions there, he reported that Clare’s treatment at Northamptonshire Asylum was the “most genial he had received.”
Mistreatment of Mentally Ill
Of course, some doctors did continue to mistreat their patients, and some asylums were horrible places. The 1844 Commissioners' Report censured eleven such institution, including the Wreckenton Lunatic Asylum. According to the report, patients often only had a plain bread and water or milk for breakfast and pea soup for dinner and were frequently restrained. This treatment was considered to be extremely unacceptable, and most people were shocked when the report became public.
Today, most professionals would use different methods to treat mentally ill people. Few mentally ill people stay in institutions today, and most doctors prescribe medication and counseling instead of fresh air and a better diet. However, we can see that many medical professionals had a great deal of concern for their mentally ill patients and did believe mental illness could be cured.
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