History of mental illness, health, and disability.

Having disabilities and mental illness is always hard, living is hard for everyone no matter what time period it is. That does not mean that life is all negative, all black and white, etc. Only as time goes on some areas of life may improve, even get worse others don’t and the reasons are so unknown to be completely honest.

When facing disabilities,  mental illnesses, and other problems it can make it harder to be understood by others even though every human being has their faults and crosses to bear. Others may have seen people for those they are not, while others may have thought the person was thick, stupid, etc because they did not of understood some or and may have been slow to pick up on something, etc or not at all. Most people may not have understood why someone may have been slow etc, may not have been patient with them, may have got cross with them thinking they may have been rude, naughty, nasty, etc. This would have made the person feel, useless, hopeless as if life is not worth living, etc. The other person may have felt the same because most back then people did not understand them and were not trained to see the positive in them, which I hope we have come along since then and I think we have always got a long way to go.

You may wonder why I am writing about this and of course, I do see the positive, but I think it is important to learn about the past to be grateful the future even though the future matters.

No more different from anyone in the 19^th century, life was hard for people with disabilities, mental illnesses, and other problems, mainly in industrial areas. Those who lived in poverty such as windowed, alcoholic, physical or mental disabilities,  those who weren’t in the care of parents, etc, were put in almshouses, poorhouses, warehouses etc. There could be many reasons behind this for example sadly back then the most common ones were parents having died mainly because not many illnesses such as TB etc weren’t cured as they are today so many people died young.

It is hard to think about what everyone was going through back in the 19^th century let alone the most vulnerable.

Such writers as Charlies Dickens wrote about what people, in general, were facing in those times, which is good to raise awareness, but it was not good for what they faced I am not aware of anyone writing about what life was like for those with disabilities, mental illness other problems not much if any at all.

Those of us who face disabilities, mental illness, and other problems know what it feels like to feel and even be misunderstood where may have some idea how those people may be living even though we live in a different time periods to what they did.

I would guess in those time that people with disabilities, mental illness and other problems have in those time been over protected or some if not most neglected. Therefore, their wants, needs and rights may not have been taken into consideration at all or as much because of very little or support, which makes me think not a lot has even changed today.

 

Back in the past, those who faced illness were treated bad. https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/witchcraft-or-mental-illness

 

Back in the 19^th century and beforehand the word disability and mental illness was not said, it was called words like handicap, cripple, insane, out of one’s mind, off one’s rocker, loopy, etc.

In the 19^th century, they tried to treat mental health and disability electric shock and locked them down from society. https://www.talkspace.com/blog/history-inhumane-mental-health-treatments/

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170215-the-strange-victorian-fashion-of-self-electrification

Some asylums were poorly cared for in institutions with a lack of compassion.  They were treated in abbeys, which were types of churches and hospitals, where they were made to say prays and other regions things. Most people faced mania, dementia, melancholy, relapsing, hysteria, epilepsy, idiocy, luere,  normally, misunderstood, and seen as drunk in the eyes and mind of society. It is believed that in Middle Ages that mental health was used in region us ways in America due to sigma towards those who face mental illness. There were negative attitudes in the 19^th century, in some cases due to misunderstanding, lack of communication, and education.