Mental Illness in the Late 1800's

The medical practices in the late 1800's were horrible compared to what we have today. Both men and women were poorly and placed into mental institutions that did not do the person justice in any way possible. The institutions did not have a logical way of treating and caring for their patients. Instead they placed the patients in isolation often called the "rest cure" and chained then to walls to attempt to control them. Today mental institutions do not focus on putting one in solitude, but to integrate the person into everyday activities (Ellis-Christensen 6).

In the story "The Yellow Wallpaper" , the narrator had been wrongfully diagnosed and was sentenced to the "rest cure." According to Ellis-Christensen the rest cure was usually used to treat women of the upper class who had just been exausted from doing their usual household activities (1). Instead of recieving a proper diagnosis, her doctor had told her to stay in bed often and not excerise her imiganitive ability. In the mean time the narrator had been a writer, she had wrote to express her feelings that she could not express to her own spouse. Writing was her life and it was torn away from her because of her diagnosis, she had been stuck in a rut and began to become slightly insane. Secretly when her husband had been at work she would sneak out her notebook and write, it was the only thing that calmed her mind. Gilman writes "I did write for a while in spite of them" (78), then continues on by saying it did exaust her. The "rest cure" did not do any women justice because the application may have cause the condition of one with mild psychological problem to become worse (Ellis-Christensen 6). One of the major probems of Dr. Salis Weir Mitchell's "Rest Cure" was that his treatment had been very sexist. His rest cure had often been applied to women of the upper class, he thought the rest cure was suppose to be applied to diseases of a female mind (Ellis-Christensen 7). To one this may not make sense, a person that suffers from mental illness should not be treated based upon their sex but the servarity of their disease. Sadily in the 19th century doctors did not think like they do today.

In the article "Prison and Asylum Reform", Dorothea Dix confessed the horendous conditions that people in the mental institutions had been fourced to go through. Dix stated to the Massachusetts Legislature that the patients were "confined in this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, beaten with rods, lashed into obedience." ("Prison and Asylum Reform 1). This should not be the way the mental ill should be treated, but in the 19th centuary there was not enought medical technology to be able to controll the servarities of ones illness. The doctors and families of the mental ill should have the mind strong enough to tell themselves what had been going on was wrong. Chaining people to walld did not make them better, it made people go more insane. In the short story "The Yellow