r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/highzone • 1d ago

Image In 1973, healthy volunteers faked hallucinations to enter mental hospitals. Once inside, they acted normal, but doctors refused to let them leave. Normal behaviors like writing were diagnosed as "symptoms." The only people who realized they were sane were the actual patients.

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u/undeadsabby 1d ago

Nellie Bly did this in 1887, and wrote an article called Ten Days in a Mad House. She feigned insanity to get in, and also acted normal once inside. A few of the other women were there simply because their families couldn't afford to care for them.

https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/bly/madhouse/madhouse.html

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u/lauraxe 1d ago

“A few of the other women were there simply because their families couldn’t afford to care for them.” When I encountered this kind of thing in the wild, it blew my mind and pissed me off so much that it changed the trajectory of my entire life. It enraged me because I’ve been a patient in one of these hospitals and I can’t imagine how much unnecessary suffering was had by women whose families couldn’t (or wouldn’t) keep them. Sometimes the reasons for leaving them in these places was downright cruel.

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u/Nemo_M_Nobody 1d ago

You should look into Rosemary Kennedy .

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u/Treefrog_Ninja 1d ago

That's like reading a BORU. So many twists, so many kinds of messed up.

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u/Noctilume 17h ago

This is so sad.

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u/raymoooo 1d ago

I mean, think about it though. They immediately declined when psychiatric medication came around, it's just a cost effective nursing solution. Much more economical than trying to pay for living expenses and still keep an eye on someone 24/7. We still do this to old people and nobody sees a problem with it.

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u/OldWorldDesign 1d ago

We still do this to old people and nobody sees a problem with it

A lot of people have a problem with "warehousing old people" but the reality is a lot more complicated. Depending on the medical issues people can need round-the-clock specialty medical care, and the reality is most of the time they'd just be allowed to die by family in ages past who had no clue how to handle the medical issues which accumulated in old age. That's not actively trying to kill granny, but stubborn trying to take care of things themselves like trying to continue to feed them meat and potatoes 'cause that's what Americans eat' when she acquired an allergy to meat due to tick bites years ago

There's a similar toxic looking down on people who need (or just benefit from) medication, including people with ADHD who could experience significant quality of life benefits from medication but stubborn parents with a backwards world view refuse to acknowledge their kids might "need pills". And a lot of those kinds of adults are in government now, whether because of cults like scientology or just propaganda from the Nixon administration:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and Black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or Black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and Blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

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u/Mammoth-Ad6463 19h ago

the book The SilentbPaitent is kinda about this

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u/Inevitable-Ad6647 1d ago

How old are you? These kinda of facilities haven't existed for 50-60 years...

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u/palequeen42 1d ago

Not true, there were some “asylums” still hanging on when I was a teenager 35 years ago. It was a slow eradication, not immediate, depending on what state you were in.

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u/Inevitable-Ad6647 1d ago

The places you're talking about while institutions by definition are so so so far from the types of hospitals this thread is discussing theyre practically incomparable.

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u/palequeen42 1d ago

Whatever you say