On escapes, liberty, happiness, and "unlocked doors," as they affect patients in asylums / by J.A. Campbell.

  • Campbell, J. A.
Date:
[1884?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On escapes, liberty, happiness, and "unlocked doors," as they affect patients in asylums / by J.A. Campbell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    a want of knowledge of the hnman mind. Wlien great happiness and contentment exist among the patients of an asylum, there must be something far wrong. If patients were happy and content in an asylum, why should they wish to leave it and face the world. A patient recovering with the hope of discharge kept before his eyes may for the time be content and cheerful. Patients who realize that they have recurrent attacks of mental disorder may have the sense to become resigned to life in an asylum and try to make the best of it. And some old broken-down patients, friendless and homeless, may in time look on the asylum as their home and the of&cials as their best friends. Certain patients exist whose mental calibre is so small, whose powers of enjoyment are so limited, that the mere, satisfying of their creature-comforts produces a sort of con- tentment which to them probably constitutes happiness. Most of the asylums in Great Britain now afford the creature- comforts required by this class. Many patients in asylums, like other people outside, are unhappy and miserable from the ever present recollection of former misdeeds, and their memory of the past causes unhappiness and fearful forebod- ino-s for the future. The absence or presence of locks on the doors may interest them only as offering a greater chance of escape from the asylum and the world, it affects not their happiness—for them a draught of the waters of Lethe would be treatment at once efacacious and pleasant. To many patients, however, an asylum is really a place of detention. You may emplov, you may amuse for the time, but you can never get them to rid themselves of this feehng. But with recoveries it is quite a different matter. We have sent our patients out as recovered, fit to take care ot themselves, presumably fit in most instances to maintain themselves; and, taking it over a period of years, I should, after examination of the re-admissions and the number ot in- dividuals discharged in one year, be satisfied of the honesty of intention in registering recoveries in most public asylums. I compare the returns of this asylum which, of course,! know best, (possibly many other EngHsh asylums might show a better record if I had time to reckon up their results) with those of the three Scotch asylums where the open-door svstem is in part or entirely in use. Where the individual :^ylum has not been the te/years at work I g-e the number of vears for which the calculation is made. I have to end the period at 1881 as I have not later reports m my posses-
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