Mental hospitals

Finally on May 28, 1850, in a fit of despair, Mayer threw himself out of his bedroom window to the street thirty feet below, but escaped without serious injui y. He spent three years in mental hospitals and did little scientific work of value after his release in 1853, although he was able to return to limited seiw-ice as a physician in Heilbronn. 

A little girl of 1 7 in a mental hospital told me she was terrified because the atom bomb was inside her. That is a delusion. The statesmen of the world who boast and threaten that they have Doomsday weapons are far more dangerous and far more estranged from reality than many of the people on whom the label "psychotic" is fixed. 

The introduction of the phenothiazinc neuroleptic drug chlorpromazine in the treatment of schizophrenia is regarded by many as the most important event in 20th century psychiatry (Table 5.1 Swazey, 1974). Prior to chlorpromazine most schizophrenics could look forward to a lifetime in a state mental hospital. Though chlorpromazine and its successor neuroleptic drugs do not cure the disease, they favorably influence the fundamental symptoms so much that most patients can function reasonably well. Together with the advent of the community mental health move-... 

Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept of Health, 110 S. Ct. 2841 (1990) See also, Washington v. Harper, 494 U.S. 210, 221-22(1990) (recognizing a significant liberty interest in avoiding the unwanted administration of antipsychotic drugs under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment ) Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480,494 (1980) (forced admission to mental hospital and behavior modification treatment implicate liberty interests). 

Wong, M.T.H., Lumsden, J., Fenton, G.W., and Fenwick, P.B.C. (1994) Electroencephalography, computer tomography and violence rating of male patients in a maximum-security mental hospital. Acta Psychiatr Scand 90 97-101. 

Ingram, I.M. (1961) Obsessive illness in mental hospital patients./ Ment Sci 107 382-402. 

Many eminent persons have had children with serious mental problems and have had at least one child take his or her life. Robert Frost s daughter was committed to the state mental hospital and another daughter had a nervous breakdown. One of Albert Einstein s children was diagnosed as schizophrenic. Ambrose Bierce s oldest son committed suicide, and his other died of alcoholism at age 27. Thomas Edison had two children who became alcoholics, one of whom committed suicide. Alfred Stieglitz s daughter was psychotic and committed to a mental institution. James Joyce had two children. His son became an alcoholic his daughter went mad and, as discussed, was admitted to an asylum for schizophrenia. Numerous other examples demonstrate the frequent problems of geniuses children. Many of these children tried unsuccessfully to pursue careers similar to their eminent parents, but it is not clear if this played any role in their mental problems. 

Carol Loeb Shloss speculates in Lucia Joyce To Dance in the Wake that whatever condition Lucia Joyce had, it was worsened by family members who forced her to give up her career in modem dance— something at which she excelled. Alas, Lucia was frequently abandoned by men she loved. Her mental health declined. Lucia s brother had her committed to a hospital and insisted that she remain locked up in institutions where she was used as a human guinea pig by psychiatrists testing their nutty theories. When she was 28 years old, the Joyces put her in an asylum near Paris, and she never lived on the outside again. James Joyce loved her dearly and never believed that she was insane. He tried desperately to get her out of occupied France. Unfortunately, he died suddenly in 1941, and Lucia was abandoned to remain in mental hospitals for the rest of her life. She died in 1982 at the age of 75. 

Weisbrod, BA, Test, MA. Stein, L.I. Alternatives to mental hospital treatment economic cost-benefit analysis. Arch. Gen. Psychiatry 37, 400-405, 1980. 

Cooper JE, Kendell RE, Gurland BJ, et al. Psychiatric diagnosis in New York and London a comparative study of mental hospital admissions. Institute of Psychiatry, Maudsley Monographs, no. 20. London Oxford University Press, 1972. 

The psychedelic movement was a spin-off of psychopharmacology, which, in the 1950s, was producing the selective antipsychotic medication that would, by the end of the twentieth century, contribute to the closing of the state mental hospitals. Some of the drugs produced by the pharmaceutical industry were inadvertently psychotogenic. 

The paper by Izumi is reminiscent of the era in which therapists took the new psychedelics in order to better understand their patients. In this case, the drug was taken to facilitate the design of a mental hospital that would provide a properly therapeutic environment for patients. The hospitals that have been built as a result of these experiences have been the first major innovations in mental-hospital construction in many years, and herald an era in which buildings will be people-oriented, in contrast to the present, when people are required to be building-adapted. 

An excellent example of this is provided by the case of Henry Maudsley, one of the most enlightened psychiatrists of his day, and for whom a leading mental hospital in London is presently named. In his fine paper "Masturbational Insanity," E. H. Hare (1962) notes that Maudsley wrote, "In the... 

Izumi, K. "An Analysis for the Design of Hospital Quarters for the Neuropsychiatric Patient," Mental Hospitals 8, 30-32,1957. 

Osmond, H. "Function as the Basis of Psychiatric Ward Design," Mental Hospitals 8, 23-29,1957a. 

This book is a broad and serious inquiry into this much-discussed topic. It will enlighten and surprise the uninitiated, as well as the frequent user. It includes first-hand reports of the nature of the experience recent scientific theories the use of psychedelics in primitive and non-western cultures and the sociology of drugs in our own society. There are also sections on the potential creative uses of psychedelics, from the enhancement of religious experience to the treatment of alcoholics and the design of mental hospitals. 

Nonetheless, the inverse relationship between unsaturated fat and CVD is supported by the results from prospective cohort studies such as the Ireland-Boston Diet Heart Study (Kushi et al., 1985) and the Nurses Health Study (Hu et al., 1997) and long-term intervention studies such as the Los Angeles Veteran Study and the Finnish Mental Hospital Study (Dayton et al., 1965 Turpeinen et al., 1979). In the Indo-Mediterranean Diet Heart Study (Singh et al., 2002) and the Lyon Diet Heart Study (de Lorgeril et al., 1999), a diet high in unsaturated fat and complex carbohydrates were proven to be potent to reduce coronary events. It has been difficult to prove a clear relationship between saturated fat and future cardiovascular events in prospective cohort studies, and this is highlighted by the recent meta-analysis described below. 

Turpeinen, O., Karvonen, M. J., Pekkarinen, M., Miettinen, M., Elosuo, R., and Paavilainen, E. (1979). Dietary prevention of coronary heart disease The Finnish Mental Hospital Study. Int. J. Epidemiol. 8, 99-118. 

Tricyclic antidepressants, major tranquillizers used in mental hospitals, are separated at UV, 254 nm, on Ci8 using 55% An/water at pH 5.5 with pentane sulfonate. Since these are very basic compounds, it is necessary to use hybrid or heavily end-capped columns and their separation benefits from organic modifiers, such as nonyl amine. 

The peace and quiet of a mental hospital, the orderliness and discipline, the tolerant and understanding attitude of those in charge, and the simplification of life, may at once produce a most gratifying change. 

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