# data[].attributes.body
The first examples of the surgical removal of parts of the brain date back to the late stone age and early bronze age. During this time it was usually used cure mental illness, alleviate extreme headaches, to get rid of the possession of evil spirits, and to cure epilepsy. Throughout the middle ages and renaissance, surgery on the brain was still being used for epilepsy and madness.

# data[].attributes.body
In 1848, a man named Phineas P. Gage was severely injured while working on the construction of a railroad. A premature explosion propelled a metal rod through Gage's head. The rod entered his skull by his left cheek, traversed the midline, the left frontal lobe, and exited the cranium just right of the midline near the intersection of the sagittal and coronal sutures. Gage survived but, on reports of his friends and family, changed from a hardworking responsible man, to one with little motivation or care. This was later recognized as frontal lobe syndrome. This incident started the idea of surgically changing the brain once again.

# data[].attributes.body
Frontal Lobotomy started to be more regularly preformed in the 1930's. The start of the war had caused budget cuts and staff shortages in asylums, mental institutions, and hospital. Medical drugs had not yet been fully developed and were not well tested and the number of patients being admitted to asylums continued to grow. Psychotherapy was also largely unavailable or ineffective for some patients. At this point lobotomy was described as the sectioning of the prefrontal cortex and leucotomy. The white matter connections between the prefrontal cortex and the thalamus were sectioned to alleviate severe mental illness, including depression and schizophrenia in long-term hospitalized patients. However, symptoms after surgery began to become noticed. These symptoms consisted of lack of emotions, blankness, euphoria, apathy, and a lack of restraint.

#numb #brocken #probsnotsafe

# data[].attributes.body
"'Do you know what these scars are?' Valerie persisted. 'No. What are they?' 'I 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 Caplan. I can go to town, now, or shopping or to a movie, along with a nurse.'" (Plath 192)

#girlboss #butissheokay

# data[].attributes.body
Insulin-prompted trance like states

Lobotomies

Electroshock treatment

These treatment methods are usually the ones talked about in mental institution horror stories, and were apart of a frenzy of experimentation pushed by Sigmund Freud starting in the 1930s. (Lesser)

Despite the fact that they are still legal today, they are only used in very specific cases and medical consent laws and alternative methods of treatment have made these practices very rare.

New research in psychology and psychiatry, as well as improvements in therapy, have also reduced the need for these treatment methods.

#I'mscared
#it'sfine

# data[].attributes.body
Deinstitutionalisation was the process of moving patients out of state owned asylums and long-stay institutions in the 1950s.

This movement initially lead to a massive mental health crisis, and the importance and prominence of private hospitals, such as McLean, came into play.

"The regulation was regularly considered as the best strategy for treatment yet overstaffing and helpless everyday environments incited a push to outpatient care" (Lesser).

#nomoreasylums

# data[].attributes.body
With deinstitutionalisation, professionals looked to make the treatment of mental illness more accessable to make an individual's life outside of an asylum more 'sensible.' (Lesser)

The advancement of antipsychotic drugs began in the 1950s and 1960s as a method of decreasing the need for institutionalisation.

Experimentation with antipsychotic drugs would continue through the 1990s, successfully and significantly decreasing the number of individuals whose needed to be regulated in a hospital.

#drugsaregood
#notalldrugs

# data[].attributes.body
McLean Hospital is one of the most well known and successful mental hospitals in the US. Part of its fame comes from its famous clientel, including Sylvia Plath, who documented her experiences there in her novel, The Bell Jar.

Another famous book that takes place at McLean is Girl, Interrupted, Susanna Kaysen's nonfiction story of her experience in the women's ward at McLean.

Today, McLean is the the world's largest neuroscientific and psychiatric research program in a private hospital.

# data[].attributes.body
Founded February 25, 1811 in Charleston, Massachusetts with a charter granted from the state legislature for the treatment of mental illness.

Architect Charles Bulfinch was hired to transform a mansion into a treatment facility, adding additional wings to allow patients to stay at the hospital.

Was first known as ‘Asylum for the Insane,’ and admitted its first patient on October 6, 1818, when the asylum first opened.

In 1826, the hospital was renamed after John McLean, a wealthy donor, who gifted the hospital $25,000 after his wife died there in 1823. McLean would continue to be a patron to the hospital’s cause years later.

In 1844, Luther V. Bell, the asylum’s superintendent, along with 12 other asylum superintendents formed the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane. This would eventually become the American Psychiatric Foundation (APA).

# data[].attributes.body
In the The Bell Jar, Esther is admitted to McLean Hospital.

There, she experiences Psychoanalysis and "Talk Therapy" as well as ECT, or electroconvulsive shock treatment in Chapter 17.

Esther's experience with Dr. Nolan was fairly typical for patients at McLean.

In the novel, Esther is led through a series of tunnels: "Then Doctor Nolan unlocked a door at the end of the hall and led me down a flight of stairs into the mysterious basement corridors that linked, in an elaborate network of tunnels and burrows, all the various buildings of the hospital" (Plath 225).

These tunnels were built under the hospital when the location was changed to Belmont in 1892 for rebranding and expansion in order to admit more patients.

Susanna Kaysen also references the tunnels in Girl, Interupted as an escape route for some of the patients at the hospital.

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
In the movie adaptation of Girl, Interrupted, Susanna's razor is confiscated and she is told that if she wants to shave, she must do so under nurse supervision.

# data[].attributes.body
Trigger Warning for the Following Text: SH

Girl, Interrupted is a nonfiction memoir by Susanna Kaysen about the author’s experience in a McLean Hospital in the 1960s.

The book provides a stream of consciousness, almost trippy, documentation of a young woman’s struggle with mental illness and recovery in the 60s. Included in the story are Kaysen’s own medical records, descriptions of the women’s ward and her fellow patients, and analysis on mental illness and its treatment methods.

The book also shows Kaysen's relationship with the other patients in the women's ward at McLean, and their experience there.

Kaysen depicts that there are limited restrictions to material items such as clothing and possetions like there are in some mental hospitals today. For example, Kaysen and many of the girls smoke and are allowed to bring cigarettes into the hospital, despite their potential to be used for self harm: "Lisa put a cigarette out on her arm at six-thirty in the morning while the nurses were changing shifts. That afternoon Lisa Cody burned a tiny welt on her wrist" (Kaysen 60).

The hospital did, however, provide some restrictions at the time. The nurses still confiscated "sharps" or any objects that were deamed as potentially dangerous to the girls, such as razors or earing backs.

Pill and medication use is also largely discussed by Kaysen and the other girls in the book. Use of Valium, Laxatives, and tranquilizers are mentioned.

#crazypeople
#confiscation
#literallyinsane

# data[].attributes.body
“Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a medical treatment most commonly used in patients with severe major depression or bipolar disorder that has not responded to other treatments.”

It is a slightly invasive process, and intentionally causes a seizure in the brain. When used today, the patient is usually given an anesthetic.

“Clinical evidence indicates that for individuals with uncomplicated, but severe major depression, ECT will produce substantial improvement in approximately 80 percent of patients. It is also used for other severe mental illnesses, such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.” (McDonald)

Some of the risks of modern ECT treatment are short term memory loss, memory gaps, fatigue, headaches, confusion, heart problems, bleeding problems, or extra pressure in the skull.

Much psychiatric research has determined that ECT is an effective treatment method, and therefore it is not banned in the United States.

#shocking
#electroshock

# data[].attributes.body
Nellie Bly was a well known journalist in the last 1800's. In 1887, Bly was able to get herself admitted to an asylum as a patient. She stayed for 10 days before she arranged for lawyers in New York to issue her release. During her stay, she talked to as many other women as she could about their experiences in the asylum. One woman she talked to, Mrs. Cotter, said that, “for crying, the nurses beat me with a broom-handle and jumped on me, injuring me internally, so that I shall never get over it.” Bly found that beatings by staff were a common thing in the asylum. It was virtually impossible for the patients to get help because they were seen as simply mentally unwell, untrustworthy, and dilusional.

#undercover #icon #literallyslayed

# data[].attributes.body
One of the first ever Insane Asylums was the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, founded in 1247. From the first asylums, all the way to those in the 1800's, conditions were horrid. At first, asylums and mental institutions were just used as a way to separate people classified as crazy from society. Rather than helping to solve their issues or find them treatments, they were often locked away in an asylum and/or restrained.

# data[].attributes.body
The reasoning as to why people were placed in asylums greatly varied. The stigma around mental illness was largely negative and many believed it to be genetic in origin. This caused many mentally ill people to be rejected by their families and outcast in society. Women were often placed in Asylums if they went against their husbands or if they didn't fit society's unrealistic expectations of women. If women were simply exhausted, overeducated, or even unmarried, they may be placed in an asylum. They could also be admitted for having premenstrual syndrome, having postpartum depression, or just for grieving the loss of a child or family member.

#toxic #gaslighting #notokay

# data[].attributes.body
"The woman looked at me and giggled. 'Why are you here?' She didn't wait for an answer. 'I'm here on account of my
French-Canadian mother-in-law.' She giggled again. 'My husband knows I can't stand her, and still he said she could come and visit us, and when she came, my tongue stuck out of my head, I couldn't stop it. They ran me into Emergency and then they put me up here,' she lowered her voice, along with the nuts.'" (Plath 176)

# data[].attributes.body
The workers in the first asylums meant to serve as nurses or keepers but instead were often seen more as guards. Harsh restraints were often used on patients. Some restraints used were straightjackets, solitary confinement, camisoles, strong dresses, cuffs, belts, being chained to the wall, being tied their beds, ball and chain restraints, and tranquilizing chairs. Women were mostly restrained by using camisoles, strong dresses, and belts, while men were often restrained with cuffs and straight jackets. These restraints were often used to control anti-social behavior, the tearing of clothes, and sexual behavior. They also stopped patients from harming themselves.

#fitcheck
#attheasylum

# data[].attributes.body
As larger asylums began to be built in the 1800's, reforms were put into action and conditions for patients improved. People like Martineau and Samuel Tuke began to push for reforms and spoke out against the harsh treatment of patients. At last, mental illness was seen as something treatable. Asylums began to treated as more of hospitals with patients and less of prisons with in-mates. Private asylums depended on funding from wealthy families or husbands of patients while community asylums looked over by local authorities and governments. Instead of using restraints and punishments, mental institutions began using positive reinforcement techniques that consisted of rewards for good behavior. The atmospheres within the institutions also lightened up. Bird cages were often placed within wings of asylums and were cared for by patients. The birds were usually parrots and were meant to serve as a symbol of freedom and hope.

# data[].attributes.body
Bly realized that many patients were not mentally ill or insane at all. Many were simply immigrants who couldn’t communicate. Other had no family to support them, didn’t meet societal expectations, or were poor. Conditions were terrible. The food was often rotten and the water was unclean. The building as a whole was highly unsanitary and it was severely understaffed. Although most of the women there had no mental illness when they were admitted, by the time they left, they were mentally and physically damaged. (Maranzani)

# data[].attributes.attachment_caption
The asylum Nellie Bly was in for 10 days.