Now is a far better time to be mentally ill than it was a few hundred years ago. Institutions like the infamous Bedlam were not happy places, and you might just find yourself chained to the wall for years on end. In the 1800s, you may have ended up in the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in …
The Downside of Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization Read More »
But Deliver Me From Crazy by Katie R. Dale is a memoir of living with bipolar disorder. You may know Katie from her blog, and she also contributed a story about bipolar I to my book Making Sense of Psychiatric Diagnosis. The book begins when Katie was in high school, when her illness first appears. …
Mental illness is fairly unique in that laws allow for treatment to be imposed involuntarily. I’m not against involuntary psychiatric treatment entirely, and it can play an important role, but there are some things that can and should be done better. When involuntary treatment is necessary Working as a nurse in community mental health, there …
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My Beautiful Psychosis by Emma Goude is a gripping, up close and personal look at what it’s actually like to experience psychosis. The author’s honesty and complete openness quickly shatter any stereotypes of psychosis being frightening and dangerous. The book begins with the events leading up to the author’s first episode of psychosis. When she …
In The Collected Schizophrenias: Essays, Esmé Weijun Wang shares how schizoaffective disorder and, in particular, other people’s reactions to it have affected her life. The author was first diagnosed with bipolar disorder while attending Stanford University. It took nine years to get a schizoaffective disorder diagnosis, as doctors seemed reluctant to diagnose a primary psychotic …
As a person with depression, being open and honest with treatment providers is likely to go straight out the window if it appears to conflict with whatever goal feels most pressing to me at the time.
I stumbled across this gem courtesy of Kate et al. of Colour of Madness. It lists reasons people were admitted to the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum in Weston, West Virginia in its first 25 years of existence, from 1864 to 1889. The building is still around, but now it’s a museum/ghost tour operation. Trans-Allegheny “diagnoses” There …
What Made You Lunatic Asylum-Level Crazy in 1864? Read More »
This post is a follow-up of sorts to a guest post I did recently on Renard’s World. While that post focused on the dark side of psychiatry in the 1900s, in this post we’ll look even further back in history at some of the frightening goings-on in early asylums to “treat” people with psychiatric illnesses. …
In this emerging blogger post, Noose Girl of Breathing With a Noose writes about an ambulance joy ride in the context of bipolar mania. Entrance and intake processing is finally complete. Before the doctor moves me from the emergency room to the next phase of my visit, he bestows the knowledge that I may have bipolar …
In this emerging blogger post, Brittany of BiPolarMania writes about experiencing manic psychosis as part of bipolar disorder. Psychosis is a mental disorder characterized by symptoms like delusions and hallucinations that indicate a break from reality. Paranoia is a common symptom of psychosis. When I was entering my final year of University I experienced a …
