Mental illness in this era like the Medieval era also called the mentally ill "mad". The Elizabethan era was different than the Medieval era in the way the insane were treated by the public. When the Elizabethan era started with the mindset of becoming more "modern" and the change to the Protestant religion from the catholic religion. Most often than not the most prevalent type of insanity was situational rather than biological ("Historical").Things like the death of family or loved ones was a big source of the madness. This is shown in the play Hamlet which I will talk about later.
Treatments for madness in this era were very extreme. In my opinion they were more like torture than anything else. Back then the doctors in mental hospitals and asylums would do some pretty ridiculous therapies to our standards in the 21st century. These included water boarding/douching, swing chairs, extreme drug therapies, vomiting, blister therapies and many more ("Psychiatry"). Water bordering is when the patient has a piece of cloth covering their face and water is pored constantly over their head with infrequent stops so they can take a breath. The swing chair is when a patient is strapped to a chair hanging from the ceiling and are swung constantly, only stopping to ask if the patient will comply with the wishes of the doctor. Both of these treatments are for patients that are depressed or back then melancholy. The other treatments such as drugs and the swing chair were designed to make the patient vomit. The vomiting made the patient feel so sick that they couldn't spend the energy needed to act insane. It also made them feel so awful that they corrected their behavior to stop the punishment ("Psychiatry"). Another treatment that was used was to create blisters on the patients body as means of deflection. This means that the blisters were suppose to make the patient stop acting insane. These were just some of the torture "therapies" used to supposedly "cure" people that had gone into madness.
The most well known treatment facility for the mentally insane was Bedlam. Bedlam started as a regular hospital in England that took its first psychiatric patients in 1357 AD and later became the first hospital to only treat the mentally ill in 1660. The hospital looked really good on the outside but the inside was like living in hell. The insane were not allowed on the ornate front lawn of the building, proving that everything about Bedlam was designed for the benefit of the families of the insane, and nothing was for the benefit of the insane that were jailed there ("Bedlam"). There are many horror stories of what went on behind the locked doors of the public. In the 1750's Bedlam opened up to the public that anyone could see what went on but at a price. They sold tickets for people to see the "treatment" of the mental ill as entertainment ("Bedlam").
Treatments for madness in this era were very extreme. In my opinion they were more like torture than anything else. Back then the doctors in mental hospitals and asylums would do some pretty ridiculous therapies to our standards in the 21st century. These included water boarding/douching, swing chairs, extreme drug therapies, vomiting, blister therapies and many more ("Psychiatry"). Water bordering is when the patient has a piece of cloth covering their face and water is pored constantly over their head with infrequent stops so they can take a breath. The swing chair is when a patient is strapped to a chair hanging from the ceiling and are swung constantly, only stopping to ask if the patient will comply with the wishes of the doctor. Both of these treatments are for patients that are depressed or back then melancholy. The other treatments such as drugs and the swing chair were designed to make the patient vomit. The vomiting made the patient feel so sick that they couldn't spend the energy needed to act insane. It also made them feel so awful that they corrected their behavior to stop the punishment ("Psychiatry"). Another treatment that was used was to create blisters on the patients body as means of deflection. This means that the blisters were suppose to make the patient stop acting insane. These were just some of the torture "therapies" used to supposedly "cure" people that had gone into madness.
The most well known treatment facility for the mentally insane was Bedlam. Bedlam started as a regular hospital in England that took its first psychiatric patients in 1357 AD and later became the first hospital to only treat the mentally ill in 1660. The hospital looked really good on the outside but the inside was like living in hell. The insane were not allowed on the ornate front lawn of the building, proving that everything about Bedlam was designed for the benefit of the families of the insane, and nothing was for the benefit of the insane that were jailed there ("Bedlam"). There are many horror stories of what went on behind the locked doors of the public. In the 1750's Bedlam opened up to the public that anyone could see what went on but at a price. They sold tickets for people to see the "treatment" of the mental ill as entertainment ("Bedlam").