I found it interesting that many people perceived the mentally ill patients as possessed by the devil. Since religion overpowered thinking in the early nineteenth century it was a widely thought assumption. I also doubt the early scientific movement helped with the sometimes cruel treatments that were more like experiments. However, Grob did a good job of giving different dynamics of Christian perception in his examples or cruelty on the mentally ill. While many viewed them as possessed some Christians like Reverend Louis Dwight, who visited jails and asylums, found those who had been in the same room for eight and nine years with no human contact, windows, and bed. Obviously these asylums’ priorities were not curing the ill but obtaining wealth off of their misfortunes. How could anyone belief that that type of treatment would help someone. Luckily, Reverend Dwight pushed for investigations and was appalled by the horrible treatment. It makes me wonder if these thoughts were separated by different denominations. – Courtney Collier I was most intrigued by the part where Grob discusses Dorothea Dix and her challenges as a woman trying to help the mentally ill at that time. Her life was shaped by her religious beliefs yet she actually saw the mentally ill as human beings who could be helped and cared for with the right treatment. Even though women lacked any power at the time Dix and other women were able to sneak under the radar with social activism. This allowed Dix to give speeches and travel to spread the word of these asylums. Grob not only talked about her statistical achievements but her zeal and passion for the treatment of the mentally ill. –Courtney Collier

Did the idea of the mental institution carry on for too long? Why did it take such a long time to realize that institutionalization does not always work? Once the idea of institutionalizing the mentally ill, families began to dispose of their relatives rather than find an opportunity for a cure. Was the reason for the large increase in the population of institutions caused by an overall population increase or did it become the norm in society to place those deemed unfit into these asylums?

I was intrigued and also not surprised by the fact that some African Americans where denied entrance into institutions and this raised some questions about mentally ill slaves and African Americans in the south in the 18th and 19th centuries. Who admitted these people into asylums at the time if they were to be accepted? How were mentally ill slaves cared for before the creation of such asylums?

What caused the changes in the reasons of why people were considered to have a mental illness? Did it just occur with the passage of time as new knowledge of individuals and what effects them were studied, or did it also include social and cultural factors of how people are treated?

I began to wonder how mad children were effected

Just as how the class had difficulty defining "mental illness", so did people in each era. Again, people outside of societal norms were marked as insane, but what defined "normal"? I would like to know more about how race and social class fell into the class of insanity. Obviously, immigrants such as the Irish or the Chinese did not fit the standard of white Protestant society, so did "normal" people automatically view them as more susceptible to mental illness?

At several points throughout, he states that the patients were extremely critical of institutions, but their objections are treated as incidental. There were whole paragraphs on p81-82 that made me angry.

I was particularly intrigued by how quickly perceptions of mental illness and methods of treatment changed in such a short amount of time. What amazed me was how smoothly the transformation occurred, and how they almost seemed to make sense.