Ten Days In A Mad-House By Nelly Bly

Cultural Analysis During the nineteenth century, mental health and mental institutions were dissatisfactory and newly introduced in America. A majority of the mental institutions were unsanitary, in poor condition, and didn’t provide proper care. The institutions were torture instead of therapeutic for the patients, causing some to slip further down into insanity. Author Nelly Bly conveys this in her piece, “Ten Days in a Mad-House,” by putting herself inside of a mental institution and faking insanity to show the corruptness of the American mental institutions. Nelly Bly was a writer in the nineteenth century who was held back in her writing career because she was a female. To break free of this barrier she had to produce something that
She wanted to improve the quality of life for the patients who would be forced to live in the conditions for much longer. Bly wrote that “two months would make her a mental and physical wreck” (Bly 297). This was indeed happened to numerous patients that surrounded her. Being starved and beaten by the nurses surely did some physical harm to their bodies as well as to their mental health. She saw the filth of the rooms and conditions of the asylum. Not only was sanitation an issue but there was no heat and some of the patients were freezing and had almost no help when they asked for more blankets or coats. The goal of the reform was to improve all of it and to better the treatment options and how they selected the patients. This was not only an issue at the asylum that Bly was at but others as well. However, there were few that excelled and had no issues other than being bombarded with chronic cases rather than short term. Peter Tyor discussed how the older generation was replaced by a “nascent group of professional administrators” they were bringing in “the most troublesome cases” (Tyor 24). This could have been the cause of overcrowding within the asylums. With more and more patients being brought in that had to stay longer to improve, the less space there was available for other patients. They were soon forced to take theses troublesome cases and were no longer able to treat like they needed to. In doing so the patients were no longer receiving the necessary treatments to improve and were forced to