Institutional abuse
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Institutional abuse can typically occur in a care home, nursing home, acute hospital or in-patient setting and can be any of the following:
- discriminatory abuse
- financial abuse
- neglect
- physical abuse
- psychological and emotional abuse
- sexual abuse
- verbal abuse
It can be considered to mainly apply to four categories of people:
- children - see also child abuse
- adults with learning difficulties
- adults with mental health problems
- older people - see also elder abuse.
Institutional abuse also refers to child abuse in institutions where children were placed for their education, welfare, rehabilitation, or even protection. Some examples include day care, orphanages, boot camps, boarding schools, and youth detention centers.
Mental institutions
The institutionalization of mental patients has always been controversial. In the 18th Century mental illnesses were not recognized as illnesses, but were seen as devil work and wrong doing. During this time asylums housed these individuals for trial and error treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomies. People in charge of the asylums did not support psychiatric treatment and evaluation. This is because they preferred the use of controversial methods of treatment (Science museum). One individual at the forefront was Dorthea Dix. When she discovered mentally ill persons at local jails she knew there had to be a better form of care . “In general, though, patients remained in asylums for the long term. There was little preparation for return to life outside, and perhaps after years cloistered in an asylum, residents became ‘institutionalized’ to some extent, and no longer desired, or could no longer face, the outside world” .
One institution in particular that did not live up to ethical standards was the Willard Asylum, located along Seneca Lake in the state of New York. Patients came in large groups by way of train to be checked into the asylum. In the book, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases From A State Hospital Attic,” the left over belongings of residents are found to determine the way of life that existed during the 1800s. Doctors running the institution referred to patients as “incurables” who were utilized as work hands in the asylum as well as the main subjects in experimental treatments. Many of the patient records indicate that they were in fact not mentally ill, but they spent their whole life in confinement. The asylum was later turned into the Willard State Hospital and was closed officially in 1995.
Notable institutions and investigations
Youth Facilities
- Florida School for Boys
- Haut de la Garenne, Jersey
- Carlisle Indian Industrial School
- PA Child Care (Kids for cash scandal)
- Fred C. Nelles Youth Correctional Facility
- North Wales child abuse scandal
Hospitals
- Bethlem Royal Hospital
- Tiergartenstraße 4
- Bloomingdale Insane Asylum
- Athens Lunatic Asylum
- Winterbourne View hospital abuse
See also
- Abuse
- Disability abuse
- Foster care#State abuses
- Institution
- Life course theory
- Vicarious liability
- Day-care sex-abuse hysteria
- Jimmy Savile sexual abuse scandal, concerning a British celebrity who is claimed to have targeted institutions
