Recovery From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry And Political Economy

118 THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF SCHIZOPHRENIATable 5.4 Mortality rates in British and American pauper asylums as a percentage of thenumber residentSource: British asylums:Thurnam, Observations and Essays on the Statistics of Insanity.Table 13. American asylums: mortality rates calculated from statistics in Grob, MentalInstitutions in America, pp. 374–93.particularly struck by the dignity with which the patients were treated, theirfreedom from restraint or restrictions in the use of potentially dangerousinstruments, their provisions for work and social activity (including sewingcircles, balls and carriage rides) and the intimate involvement of thesuperintendent and his wife in the daily life of the hospital:It is obvious that one great feature of the system, is the inculcation andencouragement, even among such unhappy persons, of a decent selfrespect.87The Boston Hospital, aside from this report, has never been heralded as anoutstandingly progressive hospital by the standards of the times. Dickens alsofound the private Hartford Retreat to be “admirably conducted,” 88 but he wasseverely critical of the recently opened New York City Asylum on Blackwell’sIsland. At the latter institution:I saw nothing of that salutary system which had impressed me so favourablyelsewhere; and everything had a lounging, listless, madhouse air. 89