SOME HISTORY

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SOME HISTORY
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OLDE COMMON LAW

• No hospitals nor treatment No Law
• Family v. Criminal law v. drifters
• The Kings guardianship
• extent and duration of incompetency

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1776 America

• 1752 Ben Franklin first sick /poor hospital
• 1773 Williamsburg Mental Hospital
• 1778 New York Statute justices sign warrents
  furiously maddso far disorderedtoo dangerous
  to be permitted to go abroad

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Pre Civil War

• More Hospitals Spring Grove
• 1844 Americam Psychiatric Association founded
  etc. (science?)
• Not just family any more (schools, social work,
  nurses)
• 1842 New York Statute seems to require commitment
  of some not necessarily homocidal lunatics

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Oakes(Mass. 1845)/ hallucinations business
affairs-loose women

• The right to restrain an insane person of his
  liberty is found in that great law of humanity,
  which makes it necessary to confine those whose
  going at large would be dangerousness to
  themselves or others
• restraint is necessary (conducive) for his
  restorationas long as necessity continues

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Mrs. Packard/ Reconstruction Era

• Lower standard of insanity for husband to commit
  wives.
• Rational but relgious ideas too novel
• She hit the circuit muckraking books
• jury trials, counsel, criminal penalty for
  perjury, at least some standard beyond opinions

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Reisner/Slobogin p.639

• ..From the Packard era until the 1970s, most
  changes in the civil commitment law aimed at
  making commitment easier rather than more
  difficult, again in large part due to medical
  advances that increased optimism about treatment
  efficacy

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Until Civil Rights 60s

• Dorothea Dix 20 States add or expand mental
  Hospitals Md. rural campuses.
• Psychotherapy( groups,cold bath,
  electro-convulsive, ) to MEDS.
• medicalized process doctors and lunacy
  commissions replace judges and Juries.
• 31 states require mental disorderneeds treatment
  only - no specific dangerousness requirement.