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Construction started in 1858 in Weston, West Virginia of the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum. Work was initially conducted by prisoners, as a form of community service to the city. When the building was constructed, it was originally supposed to hold only 250 patients, sadly around the 1950s overcrowding began to start.

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Created in the 1930s to possibly cure schizophrenia, personality disorders, and depression. The lobotomy was known for this cruel and sad outcome, leaving patients in a vegetative state to be seen as “zombies”.

#Zombified

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Originally the asylum was supposed to be completed in 1858, but the construction was put on hold in 1861 because of the Civil War outbreak.

Construction began again in 1864 and wasn’t completed until 1881. The hospital was intended to be self-sufficient, with a farm, waterworks, dairy, and cemetery located.

Of course with it being the 1800-1900, there was segregation, with a full separate wing for black people.

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Insulin shock therapy—also known as insulin coma therapy— began in the 1920s and was not stopped until 1960s. The treatment began with large doses of insulin administered one of two ways: through a nasal tube or an injection.

After the patient received their insulin, they would be given a cup of sugary fruit juice to drink, to combat the drop in blood sugar levels.

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Kragh, J.V. (2021). Shock and Coma—Insulin and Cardiazol Shock Therapy, 1937–1942.

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An instance of therapy with the use of a nasal tube.

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An instance of therapy with the use of a nasal tube.

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Were they always Places of Pain and Suffering?

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Were they always Places of Pain and Suffering?

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Lunatic Asylums weren’t always places of suffering and distress, they used to be a place to save the homeless and lost.

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Hooper Hall day room, Worcester State Hospital, Worcester, MA

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Electroconvulsive Therapy is a treatment that involves sending an electric current through the brain, causing a brief surge of electrical activity within your brain (aka a seizure). This is use in hopes of rewiring your brain to try and remove the mental illness.

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“The old term for a mental hospital was ‘lunatic asylum,’ and asylum, in its original usage, meant refuge, protection, sanctuary— in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘a benevolent institution affording shelter and support to some class of the afflicted, the unfortunate, or destitute.’” (Sacks 1).

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In the novel, The Bell Jar, Ester describes her experience with insulin shock therapy.

"Three times each day the nurses injected me, and about an hour after each injection they gave me a cup of sugary fruit juice and stood by, watching me drink it" (Plath 191).

Later within the book, Ester reveals that the treatment fails because she never falls into a coma.

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Oliver Sacks claims that most people think that asylums are “snake pits, hells of chaos and misery, squalor and brutality.” While that may be true, back in the mid-1800s, citizens payed a lot of money for these places to be built for the mentally unstable citizens.

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Builders of the asylums liked to believe that the mentally unstable could be cured by providing them with “a calming environment, fresh air, a varied diet, exercise, and jobs in the asylum’s workshops or farm - an approach known as ‘moral treatment.’” (New Scientist)

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Builders of the asylums liked to believe that the mentally unstable could be cured by providing them with “a calming environment, fresh air, a varied diet, exercise, and jobs in the asylum’s workshops or farm - an approach known as ‘moral treatment.’” (New Scientist)

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“The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you” (Plath 160).

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“The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you” (Plath 160).

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Within chapter 13, Ester reveals that the “sicker” someone was, the more of a strict confinement they had.

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The roots of ECT lie in the concept of using one disease to treat another, which was spurred by the discovery of malarial therapy for neurosyphilis.

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Although they tried the “moral treatments” for many years, it hadn’t seemed to be working. Which resulted in the employees and doctors to resort to physical and brutal procedures and treatments…

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This dosage of insulin would cause the patient to fall into an insulin coma because of their decreased blood sugar levels. This coma would last anywhere from one to four hours.

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According to Marc S. Lener, MD, “a lobotomy involves a sharp surgical tool to serve the nerve connections between the frontal lobe, which controls higher cognitive functions like:
* memory
* emotions
* problem-solving skills”

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Insulin shock therapy was believed to help with symptoms of anxiety, obsessive and compulsive thinking, depression, and hostility.
Insulin shock therapy was also commonly used to treat Schizophrenia.

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Ester was given electroconvulsive therapy in an attempt to cure her depression. On page 143, Silvia Plath allows the reader to visualize Ester’s experience with electroconvulsive therapy. Ester begins with explaining that

“[Doctor Gordon] dragged out a table on wheels with a machine on it and rolled it behind the head of the bed. The nurse started swabbing my temples with a smelly grease.”

She later continues on to say

“Doctor Gordon was fitting two metal plates on either side of my head. He buckled them into place with a strap that dented my forehead, and gave me a wire to bite. I shut my eyes. There was a brief silence, like an indrawn breath. Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world.”

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There are two different types of lobotomies that happened to be used in the asylums.

The first type is called the Prefrontal Lobotomy, this one starts out with the surgeon drilling holes in either side of the patients skull. The surgeon then takes a long metal pick to disconnect the nerves between the frontal lobe and other parts of the brain.

The second and more common procedure is known as the Transorbital Lobotomy. Very similar to the first tactic, this one involves the surgeon taking the metal pick through the patients eye socket, through the skull, and into the brain to detach the frontal lobe.

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#WhenYouThinkYou'reHelpingButYourNot

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In this mental hospital they housed many different people, such as, epileptics, alcoholics, drug addicts, and non-educable mental defectives. According to The Charleston Gazette “in 1949 many reports found poor sanitation and insufficient furniture, lighting, and heating in much of the complex.”

The lack of proper care and access to sanitation has led to nearly 400-500 patient and employees deaths, although they don’t know exactly how many people died there.

According to Sherman Cahal and Jenell Johnson, “Weston State Hospital found itself to be the home for the West Lobotomy Project in the early 1950s. This was an effort by the state of West Virginia and Walter Freeman to use lobotomies to reduce the number of patients in asylums because there was severe overcrowding.”

Patients that tended to act out and could not be contained by the nurses were often locked away in cages and fed little food, in order to hopefully make them stop acting out.

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While in the asylum, Ester was walking around with someone named Valerie. As Ester and Valerie were walking around the asylum,

“Valerie pushed aside her black bangs and indicated two pale marks, one on either side of her forehead, as if at some time she had started to sprout horns, but cut them off”

Once Ester notices these scars, she sparks a conversation with Valerie…

“‘Do you know what these scars are?’ Valerie persisted.
‘No. What are they?’
‘I’ve had a lobotomy.’
I looked at Valerie in awe, appreciating for the first time her perpetual marble calm. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Fine. I’m not angry any more. Before, I was always angry. I was in Wymark, before, and now I’m in Caplin. I can go to town now, or shopping or to a movie, along with a nurse.’”

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“My mother told me I should be grateful. She said I had used up almost all her money and if it weren’t for Mr. Guinea she didn’t know where I’d be” (Plath 185).

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“My mother told me I should be grateful. She said I had used up almost all her money and if it weren’t for Mr. Guinea she didn’t know where I’d be” (Plath 185).

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Within a paragraph found in chapter 15, Ester mentions how the asylums were expensive.

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When she was young, Rosemary Kennedy, President Kennedy’s sister, had gone under the lobotomy procedure. This was because during her teen years, her personality suffered from a drastic change. As an attempt to “fix” their daughter, Rosemary Kennedy’s parents brought her to a doctor that had recommended a lobotomy. Due to the lobotomy, she suffered from severe brain damage and “was no longer able to communicate or care for her basic needs, she was placed in a nursing home” (Kent 99).

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/10vfme1Y95yUOs2KFWz2J8-vb0WLu3yeabpWjGy9VU4s/edit

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Deinstitutionalization is the process in which mental hospitals who had patients staying for a prolonged period of time were replaced with less isolated community mental health treatments. This was an attempt to reduce the size of the mental hospitals and help with the patient’s return to every day life.

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Unlike many of the other inhumane treatments, ECT is still used today, though it is executed much differently. ECT is done under general anesthesia and smaller charges of electricity are used. ECT is treatment for severe depression, severe mania, and severe agitation. Today, Electroconvulsive Therapy is more safe than it was in the 1950s.

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Warning: there may be some sensitive topics and photos within this video.

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Warning: there may be some sensitive topics and photos within this video.

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This is a very informational documentary produced by Mental Health America. MHA is a non-profit organization dedicated to educate people on anything related to mental illness.
This video takes a look at a couple different survivors of the mental asylums. They share their experience and the horrid things they went through.

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Due to the harsh changes made to the patient treatments in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, it was forced to close in 1994. Today the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum is used to give supernatural and historical tours, many people from around the world has traveled to visit this place and learn about the terrible mistreatment and interesting history.