[or-roots] Oregon Insane Asylums

[CKlooster at aol.com]

For a shamefully long time mental health issues remained in the dark  ages.  
I'm not so certain we've come all that far even today.  Women's  mental health 
seemed always to attributed to hormones, and hysterectomy was the  panacea 
for everything that ailed a woman.  I did get kind of a kick out of  the one of 
the listers who wrote that since men made the decisions, women were  the only 
ones treated that way.  My immediate response was...well,  actually, only 
women can have hysterectomies...  There were,  however, plenty of barbaric 
treatments given to men as well.  Lobotomies  done by inserting a steel rod through 
the back of the eye socket and stirring it  around willy-nilly were done up to 
the mid-1950's by certain doctors.  This  was the procedure done on President 
Kennedy's sister so it wasn't just poor and  uneducated families who had this 
happen.
 
You do see in the old records, a larger number of elderly women ending up  in 
asylums (now there is a misnomer if I've ever heard one) or state hospitals,  
but this is logical because women lived longer, and if an elderly woman 
became  slightly senile and no longer had a husband living, she would be at the 
mercy of  well-intentioned (?) neighbors and family members.  A lot of people who 
in  this day would be in an assisted living facility, or would have home 
health care  assistance, were sent to the the state hospital.  
 
Carla
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