George Georgiou in Serbia and Kosovo – A Photographic Exhibit of a Mental Institution
“Between 1999 and 2002, I visited three psychiatric institutions while living and working in Kosova and Serbia on a long term project, Between The Lines, on the aftermath of the NATO conflict with Serbia. The work from the institutions, a story on it’s own, is also an integral part of this bigger narrative of conflict, division, difference and exclusion.
Having spent four years teaching a photography class to people with psychiatric disorders in London prior to this, psychiatric institutions and patients were not alien to me and I was aware of the fluctuating behavioural patterns. What I found in Kosova and Serbia was a far cry form contemporary practice in London.”
Manifestations
https://magazine.lensvid.com/movies/1352213749/haunting-vintage-photos-from-mental-hospitals
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A photographer visited a mental asylum in Asuncion, Paraguay, and he kept having a run-in with this particular patient. The patient would repeatedly stand directly in front of his camera with his gaze steady like this. He is known to be violent, so the photographer took care to keep a distance, but the patient still managed to get in most of his photos.
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Ohio’s mental hospital, the Athens Lunatic Asylum known as The Ridges, was considered one of the creepiest in the area. It first opened its doors in 1874 and, at the time, provided the best care available. Most patients were Civil War soldiers who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder. It became a place where family members would place those they just couldn’t take care of anymore, the elderly, homeless, and rebellious teenagers.
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Restraint
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This photo was taken during the Victorian era in the 1880s. Public asylums during the Victorian period were so ghastly that the institutions still haunt the history of psychiatry today. Back then, they were known as lunatic asylums which had a reputation as being dehumanizing and structured like a prison.
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The Utica Crib was a contraption used by doctors to control and calm patients who were out of control. It was a normal bed with slats on the sides and a hinged top that had a lock on the outside. It was 18 inches deep, 6 feet long, and 3 feet wide. Many patients died while inside of the crib.
The West Riding Lunatic Asylum in Wakefield, U.K., was one of the largest and most well-known asylums of the Victorian era. It played a significant role in the development in the field of psychiatry. In its height, the hospital had over 1,500 patients, as well as its own farm, chapel, brewery, and in-house firefighters.
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This photograph was taken in Cuenca, Spain, in 1961. Many pictures of children taken from inside mental institutions show them being kept locked in a basket (or a coffin). For the asylum staff members, this method was one way to ensure the children would not run away.
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These men are seen restrained in straight jackets. The photo was taken at the Utica Psychiatric Center; it was New York’s first state-run facility designated for the care of the mentally ill. It was also in this hospital where one medical professional would create a “solution” to their patient problem. Later, the scientific community would condemn the invention as being way too similar to a coffin.
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Oftentimes, when a patient was experiencing a breakdown or fit, the medical professionals turned to confinement. From chains to cages to straight jackets, there are been many different kinds of confinement methods. The photo above shows a young man strapped into a straightjacket, wearing a hat made out of mesh wire metal, and locked in a chair.
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As you can easily discern from the photograph above, even children were not exempt from inhumane treatment. The boy in the photograph is a patient at The Slipshod Home For Feeble-Minded Children.
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In the 19th century, it was believed by the scientific community that carnal pleasure caused insanity. Devices such as this were designed to prevent the individual from indulging in their vices. They were often used in mental institutions.
Therapies
St. Elizabeth’s Hospital opened in 1855 and was the first federally operated psychiatric hospital in the United States. It had a medical-surgical unity, nursing school, and even psychiatric residences. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1990. Here in this photo is two doctors displaying the electroshock machine at the hospital in 1923.
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This photograph is quite telling of the kinds of techniques used in the field of psychiatry during the 19th and 20th century. A patient is seen receiving lateral cerebral diathermia treatment sometime in the 1920s. Diathermia was before electroconvulsive therapy and was considered to be the “laser” technique of its day.
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Dr. Freeman was a physician who specialized in lobotomy. Dr. Freeman charged just $25 for each procedure. Over the course of his career, he performed as many as 4,000 lobotomy surgeries in 23 states. Out of which, 2,500 was performed using an ice-pick. All of this occurred despite the fact that he had no formal surgical training.
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https://4thwavenow.com/2017/02/10/lobotomy-the-rise-and-fall-of-a-miracle-cure/
Hydrotherapy, essentially, was a practice of continuous baths. The treatment required wrapping a patient up in wet cloths or spraying them with water. Other times, the patient would be strapped down into a bath, a sheet covering the tub and just their head poking out. Bath therapy could last several hours or several days. Hydrotherapy was used to treat insomnia or depression. This photo shows patients undergoing hydrotherapy is St. Elizabeths Hospital, Washington D.C. in 1886.
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The practice of hydrotherapy was introduced in the early 1900s. It involved immersing the patient into a tub of water in order to relieve agitation. The treatment would last a few hours to a whole day.
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In the early 20th century, medical professionals used radioactive material called radium in the treatment of mental illness. Radium was used in many different forms purportedly for its many healing properties. Individuals who dealt with impotence would be treated by inserting radioactive wax rods into the urethra. The women in this photograph are seen receiving radium therapy
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