range early treatments
Along with improvements to the physical structures that housed them, care for the mentally ill gradually began to shift from strictly custodial to therapeutic, with treatments running the gamut from the simply bizarre to the truly horrific.
For instance, in the late 18th century, Philadelphia's Dr. Benjamin Rush, -- considered the founding father of American psychiatry
Photo: Hoag Levins
|Dr. Benjamin Rush's 'Tranquilizer' chair. Larger|
-- invented two curious "therapeutic" devices. His "Tranquilizer" chair was designed to, in Dr. Rush's words, "keep maniacs in the inflammatory stage of their disease perpendicular... so as to save the head from the impetus of the blood as much as possible." The second, called the "Gyrator," placed the patient on a board, head outward like a spoke on a wheel, then rotated the board at high speed, sending blood racing to the head to supposedly relieve a congested brain.
At the other end of the spectrum were electroconvulsive therapy -- shock therapy -- that delivered a series of
Photo: National Archives
|Typical of the 19th- and early 20-century treatments for insanity that now seem unscientific or even bizarre was the wrapping of patients in wet sheets. They were then laid out in neat rows. Larger|
electric shocks across the head to produce convulsions designed to improve the symptoms of schizophrenia, and the barbaric lobotomy, which severed the fibers connecting the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain -- sometimes using tools as crude as an ice pick and a hammer.
Eventually, more modern facilities like Lakeland and the new Ancora began to add counseling, as well as occupational, recreational, industrial and physical therapy, to their treatment programs at about the same time a new class of drugs -- the antipsychotics -- hit the market. By the mid-1950s, with 560,000 Americans hospitalized for various forms of mental illness, Thorazine had become so popular manufacturers couldn't keep up with demands. From then on, psychotropic agents with names literally
|Today, the new Camden County Health Services Center at Lakeland and Ancora Psychiatric Hospital in Hammonton provide psychiatric services for county residents. Larger|
ranging from A to Z -- Abilify and Antabuse to Zolof and Zyprexa -- soon became standard treatments in modern psychiatry.
Despite the undeniable strides both hospitals had made in treating the mentally ill, Ancora wasn't the only one to take its licks in the press. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Lakeland was rocked by charges of inefficient operations, the ups and downs of political uncertainties and negative community perceptions. By 1998 the decision was made to consolidate county operations into a single, modern facility occupying 226,000 square feet. Today that sprawling complex at Lakeland is known as the Camden County Health Services Center, part of which is a modern, 158-bed Behavioral Health facility that, along with Ancora Psychiatric Hospital, provides state-of-the-art psychiatric care for the residents of Camden County.
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