How Mental Illness Became a Crime | Jonathan M. Metzl | Big Think

TL;DR

The evolution of treating schizophrenia from asylums to prisons due to societal fears and transformations.

Transcript

really one of the things I really try to do very consciously in the book is to track a particular evolution of that process and part of what I show is that even though we had all these asylums in the 1930s and 40s and 50s where we locked away all of these people there was this and often for long periods of time but not always there was this assumpt... Read More

Key Insights

• 🫵 Asylums in the past aimed at treating individuals with schizophrenia, viewing them as responsibilities of the state.
• 🙈 The 60s saw a shift in perception, linking schizophrenia to threats against society.
• ⚾ The evolution from hospital-based to prison-based institutions was driven by societal perceptions of mental illness.
• 🙃 Prisons became the de facto mental hospitals due to fear and societal transformations.
• ❎ The transformation impacted the treatment of individuals with schizophrenia in a negative manner.
• 🥺 Mainstream society coded threats against the state as insanity, leading to increased fear of individuals with schizophrenia.
• 🏥 Bernard Harcourt discusses the nationwide transformation from hospitals to prisons for individuals with mental illness.

Questions & Answers

Q: How did the treatment of schizophrenia evolve from asylums to prisons?

The evolution stemmed from societal fears in the 60s linking schizophrenia to threats against the state, leading to confinement in prison-like settings.

Q: Why were individuals with schizophrenia seen as threats to society in the 60s?

Schizophrenia became associated with civil rights protests and perceived as a threat to the political order, leading to increased fear and confinement.

Q: What factors contributed to the transformation of mental hospitals into prisons?

Reasons include societal perceptions of mental illness as threatening and the belief that prisons were more suitable for managing individuals with schizophrenia.

Q: How did the transformation impact the treatment of individuals with schizophrenia?

The shift to prison-based institutions had detrimental effects on individuals with schizophrenia, resulting in a more punitive and less therapeutic approach to treatment.

Summary & Key Takeaways

• Historically, asylums in the 1930s-50s had an assumption of treatment for schizophrenia.

• In the 60s, schizophrenia was linked to threats against the state, leading to fear and confinement.

• The shift from hospital-based treatment to prison-based occurred due to societal perceptions of mental illness.