UMW Fall 2023
For our readings this week we read Jonathan Metzl’s The Protest Psychosis. I found this clip from CSPAN’s Book TV of Metzl giving a presentation on his findings that are discussed in the book. The presentation, given at the University of Michigan, he discusses his initial plans for the book and the findings that we read throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEpvqQcwmfE&list=WL&index=19&t=18s
Since we are discussing the Ionia State Hospital this week, I found this website that gives a brief overview of the hospital, along with providing a small image galley of the hospital. The website also has other asylums and hospitals listed. So its a fun little thing to go through just to look at some of the hospital listed on the site.
https://www.asylumprojects.org/index.php/Ionia_State_Hospital
After our discussion on how schizophrenia was used against African Americans before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement, I got to thinking about a book I saw in Simpson Library that covered a similar phenomenon in women. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s (1987) by Carrol Warren was a book I stumbled across while doing research. After looking into it a bit more, I thought it would be an interesting source to point out for this class. Warren is a Professor Emerita from the University of Kansas’s Sociology Department. Her book looks at the gender-stereotypical behavior and the institutionalization of married women in the 1950s. We discussed briefly in groups how schizophrenia was basically a catch-all term for mental disorders, and that women were just as likely to be diagnosed with it as African Americans. The same basic idea comes into play that anyone who does not follow the social norms of their time was mentally ill, and thus had to be hospitalized, was what caused this. I think this book would be interesting to read parts of alongside Metzl’s The Protest Psychosis, simply because both books would provide interesting takes of scholars outside of history. Like I mentioned before, Simpson Library has a copy of this book if anyone is interested!
Warren, Carol A. B. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
After our discussion on how schizophrenia was used against African Americans before, during, and after the Civil Rights Movement, I got to thinking about a book I saw in Simpson Library that covered a similar phenomenon in women. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s (1987) by Carrol Warren was a book I stumbled across while doing research. After looking into it a bit more, I thought it would be an interesting source to point out for this class. Warren is a Professor Emerita from the University of Kansas’s Sociology Department. Her book looks at the gender-stereotypical behavior and the institutionalization of married women in the 1950s. We discussed briefly in groups how schizophrenia was basically a catch-all term for mental disorders, and that women were just as likely to be diagnosed with it as African Americans. The same basic idea comes into play that anyone who does not follow the social norms of their time was mentally ill, and thus had to be hospitalized, was what caused this. I think this book would be interesting to read parts of alongside Metzl’s The Protest Psychosis, simply because both books would provide interesting takes of scholars outside of history. Like I mentioned before, Simpson Library has a copy of this book if anyone is interested!
Warren, Carol A. B. Madwives: Schizophrenic Women in the 1950s. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1987.
Trigger Warning: Discussion of wartime trauma This article is a good bridge between our discussion this week and my own
This week we are reading a text by Dr. Jonathan M. Metzel. I looked him up and found he has authored several books. Dr. Metzel is also a professor of psychology at Vanderbilt University. His latest book “Dying of Whiteness” looks quite interesting. Below is a link to his webpage.
This TikTok gives a brief overview of the historical hysteria diagnosis and demonstrates how problematic it was. If a woman displayed any signs of being hormonal or emotional, they were seen as having a mental illness. The fact that it wasn’t removed from the DSM till 1980 is shocking!
For my resource blog post this week I have chosen this short clip released by the British War Archives. The video depicts a man who is clearly struggling to function, stumbling all over the room. The end of the video shows the previously ailed soldier as now clean cut. This clip does a great job at showing what the perception of what shell shock looked like at the time. Also, it is a great source to show the optimism for curability. The man in the video seems to be depicted as a severe case but he is able to return to normalcy.
A large amount of Pediatricians apparently see the mental health issues in children brought by the pandemic as a national emergency. Covid caused a rise of mental health issues in people and its impacted children even more.
One of the readings for this week was the continuation of Summers, Madness in the City. Summers Published his work in 2019, but the history Summers gives of Saint Elizabeths ends in the 1980s. I wanted to follow up on Summers’s work and find out how Saint Elizabeths was doing today and if the institution had any improvements. According to a Washington Post article, this is not the case. Deinstitutionalization was a failure especially in the case of Saint Elizabeths. Summers argues in his book, Saint Elizeabthes was an institution that once was the model for mental health care in America but became emblematic of the neglect of the federal government. Summers’s argument still rings true today. In the Washington Post article, the conditions of the institution are in horrible shape and patients are still being neglected. Seventeen people who were forceable committed to Saint Elizabeth’s died from complications due to Covid-19. Also, a staff member lost their life because they were exposed to coronavirus. The Article, at the time, that it was written, over half of the hospital’s population was affected by the virus. The reason for the high contractions of the virus is due to the institution’s lack of preventative measures in place to help decrease the spread of the virus and the delayed action in the prevention of the spread of coronavirus. The article also mentions an incident not related to Covid-19 which further confirms that the Saint Elizabeth Hospital is still on the decline.
