At one point, the list of reasons why someone could be admitted to an asylum grew to 125. Some of these reasons are valid, while others are completely bazaar by today's standards. Here is a list we found and wanted to share. (Other hospitals nay have had different criteria)
Amenorrhea
Asthma
Bad company
Bad habits & political excitement
Bad whiskey
Bite of a rattle snake
Bloody flux
Brain fever
Business nerves
Carbonic acid gas
Carbuncle
Cerebral softening
Cold
Congestion of brain
Constitutional
Crime
Death of sons in the war
Decoyed into the army
Deranged masturbation
Desertion by husband
Diphtheria
Disappointed affection
Disappointed love
Disappointment
Dissipation of nerves
Dissolute habits
Dog bite
Domestic affliction
Domestic trouble
Doubt about mother’s ancestors
Dropsy
Effusion on the brain
Egotism
Epileptic fits
Excessive sexual abuse
Excitement as officer
Explosion of shell nearby
Exposure & hereditary
Exposure & quackery
Exposure in army
Fall from horse
False confinement
Feebleness of intellect
Fell from horse
Female disease
Fever
Fever & loss of law suit
Fever & nerved
Fighting fire
Fits & desertion of husband
Gastritis
Gathering in the head
Greediness
Grief
Gunshot wound
Hard study
Hereditary predisposition
Ill treatment by husband
Imaginary female trouble
Immoral life
Imprisonment
Indigestion
Intemperance
Interference
Jealousy
Jealousy & religion
Kick of horse
Kicked in the head by a horse
Laziness
Liver and social disease
Loss of arm
Marriage of son
Masturbation & syphilis
Masturbation for 30 years
Medicine to prevent conception
Menstrual deranged
Mental excitement
Milk fever
Moral sanity
Novel reading
Nymphomania
Opium habit
Over action on the mind
Over heat
Over study of religion
Over taxing mental powers.
Parents were cousins
Pecuniary losses: worms
Periodical fits
Political excitement
Politics
Puerperal
Religious enthusiasm
Religious excitement
Remorse
Rumor of husband’s murder or desertion
Salvation army
Scarlet fever
Seduction
Seduction & disappointment
Self abuse
Severe labor
Sexual abuse and stimulants
Sexual derangement
Shooting of daughter
Smallpox
Snuff
Snuff eating for two years
Softening of the brain
Spinal irritation
Sun stroke
Sunstroke
Superstition
Suppressed masturbation
Suppression of menses
Tabacco & masturbation: hysteria
The war
Time of life
Trouble
Uterine derangement
Venereal excesses
Vicious vices in early life
Women
Women trouble
Young lady & fear
Needless to say, with such a broadly based set of criteria to determine if someone was in need of psychiatric care coupled with the fact that that family members could simply drop off someone and admit them against their will and the courts often sentenced people to a mental hospital rather than jail, it is easy to see how these facilities became extremely overcrowded.
Just imagine how many people were locked up in these facilities, without real psychiatric problems. Now, imagine what their state of mind might have been after 6 months undergoing treatments and trying to survive ordinary day to day life. I would imagine that would have a negative effect on their state of mind.
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