**Authors Note~This may be disturbing to sensitive readers.**
The clergy (formal leaders in certain religions) played a significant role in treating the mentally ill as "medical practice was a natural extension of ministers' duty to relieve the afflictions of their flocks." Private madhouses were established and run by members of the clergy to treat the mentally afflicted who could afford such care. Catholic nations regularly staffed mental health facilities with clergy, and most mentally ill individuals in Russia were housed in monasteries until asylums spread to this region of the world in the mid-1800s.
To relieve mental illness, regular attendance in church had been recommended for years as well as pilgrimages to religious shrines. Priests often comforted mentally disturbed individuals by encouraging them to repent their sins and seek refuge in God's mercy. Treatment in clergy-run facilities was a desirable alternative as the care was generally very humane, although these establishments could not treat the whole of the mentally ill population, especially as it seemed to grow in number.
Asylums were established around the world starting, most notably, from the sixteenth century onward. Asylums were notorious for the deplorable living conditions and cruel abuse endured by those admitted.
For many years, asylums were not facilities aimed at helping the mentally ill overcome their illnesses. Instead, asylums were merely reformed penal institutions where the mentally ill were abandoned by relatives or sentenced by the law and faced a life of inhumane treatment, all for the sake of lifting the burden off of ashamed families and preventing any possible disturbance in the community. The majority of asylums were staffed by gravely untrained, unqualified individuals who treated mentally ill patients like animals. Iron cuffs and collars permitted just enough movement to allow patients to feed themselves but not enough to lie down at night, so they were forced to sleep upright. Little attention was paid to the quality of the food or whether patients were adequately fed. There were no visitors to the cell except to deliver food, and the rooms were never cleaned. Patients had to make do with a little amount of straw to cover the cold floor.
When staff did attempt to cure the patients, they followed the practices typical of the time period—purging and bloodletting, the most common. Other treatments included dousing the patient in either hot or ice-cold water to shock their minds back into a normal state. The belief that patients needed to choose rationality over insanity led to techniques aiming to intimidate. Blistering, physical restraints, threats, and straitjackets were employed to achieve this end. Powerful drugs were also administered, for example, to a hysterical patient in order to exhaust them.
Although cruel treatment in asylums surely felt to the patients as if it had been going on for ages, conditions began to improve in the mid-to- late 1800s as reforms were called for, and this shameful and unenlightened period was somewhat brief in relation to the span of world history.
