Mental Health in New York State: The Historical Evolution of State Aid to the Mentally Ill, With Emphasis on the State’s Role in the Development of Community Mental Health Programs, 1946–1964
Abstract
Any study in depth of the history of the mentally ill, will reveal amazingly sordid details concerned with the unnecessary dehumanization of those persons afflicted with symptoms of what we currently refer to as mental illness. It is hard to believe that man himself, or the combination of man and state, could condone these mistreatments which history has recorded. For emphasis, we briefly mention a few classical examples of the abuse of mental patients in this country scarcely more than a century ago. We know that insane patients and idiots were chained to the walls in cold cellars, beaten with rods, lashed, and confined in cages and pens. One idiot was kept in a close stall for seventeen years, and a young girl, chained naked in a barn, was the prey for the boys of the village. Another "crazy pauper," annually "sold" at auction to the lowest bidder, had been chained in an outhouse in winter so that his feet had frozen and reduced to shapeless stumps.
Subject Area
Multicultural Education|Mental health|American history|Social work
Recommended Citation
Ward, James W, "Mental Health in New York State: The Historical Evolution of State Aid to the Mentally Ill, With Emphasis on the State’s Role in the Development of Community Mental Health Programs, 1946–1964" (1964). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI31050494.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI31050494
