Mental illness in the mid- to late-1800s
Mental illness in the mid- to late-1800s
Imagine you are suffering from mental illness in the 1800s: You find yourself in a dank basement of a hospital, surrounded by other people in the same situation—some of them quite debilitated. They are only barely clothed, despite the cold conditions. Occasionally, members of the community come to stare at you, as if you are an animal in a zoo.
Today, such scenes are considered unthinkable. Mental health treatment is viewed as part of the holistic care of an individual, and there are laws regulating consent and appropriate treatment conditions. In the 1800s, however, such laws did not exist. A contemporary of the time, advocate Dorothea Dix, aimed to better conditions by petitioning the federal government for more funding.
In this Discussion, you compare mental health treatment in the time of Dorothea Dix to current treatment.
BY DAY 3
Post a response to the following:
Describe two ways individuals living with a mental illness in the mid- to late-1800s were treated.
Identify a mental health program that exists in society today. Explain the mission and population served.
Compare the contemporary program’s perspective on mental health to that of the Dorothea Dix era.
Determine whether these programs support or counter the work of Dorothea Dix, and explain why or why not.
1 (b)Discussion: Social Welfare Services for Veterans
If you were a veteran of the U.S. Civil War, you might have returned home injured, unable to work, and traumatized by what you had seen. As noted in your text, you would have survived a mortality rate of 43%–52% but would nevertheless be in economic and perhaps physical distress. What assistance would be available to you, and would that assistance be the same if you were a Union or Confederate veteran?
For this Discussion, you analyze the aid options for veterans after the U.S. Civil War and consider whether they align with the idea of social justice and with contemporary options and attitudes.
BY DAY 3
Post a response to the following:
Identify and describe two programs and/or policies developed after the U.S. Civil War for veterans.
Describe the populations served by these programs and/or policies.
Determine if these programs and/or policies promoted social justice, and explain why or why not.
Compare the programs you identified to contemporary programs or policies or to current attitudes about veteran welfare.
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
