Browsing by Subject "Central State Hospital"

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    Gendered and Racialized Experiences at Central State Hospital, Indianapolis, 1877 - 1910
    (2020-12) Downey, Caitlin June; Robertson, Nancy Marie; Scarpino, Philip V.; Badertscher, Katherine; Nelson, Elizabeth Angeline
    “Gendered and Racialized Experiences at Central State Hospital, Indianapolis, 1877 – 1910” analyzes the treatment of African American patients at the now-defunct Central State Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana, throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, from the late 1870s through the 1900s. This thesis examines the impact of scientific racism and institutionalized sexism on female African American patients’ diagnoses, medical treatment, and the outcome of institutionalization through a close reading of hospital publications and a series of statistical studies of patient data. This thesis also analyzes the intersection of race and gender through the case study of one African American woman, Elizabeth Williams Furniss, who was institutionalized during the 1890s until her death in 1909. I argue that scientific racism and a deeply entrenched sexism significantly shaped the treatment of African American patients and women of all races throughout the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Preconceived notions of race, gender, and class determined diagnoses, treatments, and treatments outcomes, without regard to individual patients’ needs. I also suggest ways for historians to identify and measure the impact of scientific racism and institutionalized sexism on African American patients in northern psychiatric institutions through statistical studies of patient data.
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    Voices from the Newspaper Club: Patient Life at a State Psychiatric Hospital (1988-1992)
    (Springer, 2020-05-21) Beckman, Emily; Nelson, Elizabeth; Labode, Modupe; Medical Humanities and Health Studies, School of Liberal Arts
    The authors conducted a qualitative analysis of thirty-seven issues of The DDU Review, a newsletter produced by residents of the Dual Diagnosis Unit, a residential unit for people who had diagnoses of developmental disability and serious mental illness in the Central State Hospital (Indiana, USA). The analysis of the newsletters produced between September 1988 and June 1992 revealed three major themes: 1) the mundane; 2) good behavior; and 3) advocacy. Contrary to the authors’ expectations, the discourse of medicalization—such as relations with physicians, diagnoses, and medications—receive little attention. Instead, the patient-journalists focus on prosaic aspects of institutional life. The patients used their writing as a form self-definition and advocacy. The authors argue that even though it is tempting to consider the patients’ emphasis on good behavior as evidence of institutional control, internalized discipline, and medicalization, a more nuanced interpretation, which focuses on how the patients’ understood their own experiences, is warranted. Researchers must also recognize the ways in which The DDU Review reveals the patient-journalists’ experience of an institutional life that includes non-medical staff (attendants, secretaries, and therapists), varied social relationships among patients, and negotiated freedoms.