Snake Pits, Talking Cures, & Magic Bullets: A History of Mental Illness

by Deborah Kent

Looks at how the mentally ill have been treated throughout history, focusing on advances made in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries regarding mental hospitals, medications, and social acceptance.

Genres: Mental Illness, Psychology, History, Mental Health

160 pages, Library Binding

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Deborah Kent was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby Little Falls. She graduated from Oberlin College and received a master's degree from Smith College School for Social Work. For four years, she was a social worker at University Settlement House on New York's Lower East Side. In 1975, Ms. Kent moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, where she wrote her first young-adult novel, Belonging. In San Miguel, Ms. Kent helped to found the Centro de Crecimiento, a school for children with disabilities. Ms. Kent is the author of numerous young-adult novels and nonfiction titles for children. She lives in Chicago with her husband, children's author R. Conrad Stein, and their daughter, Janna.

Reviews

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a general theme, I might put the history of mental illness this way: “We now know that _________ treatment was inappropriate and ineffective during the _____ century .” And then repeat that countless times throughout history. Then, 50 years from now, we will probably say, “We now know that treatment in the early 2000s was inappropriate and ineffective.”

[Meaghan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A straightforward, well-researched and compelling, yet thoroughly depressing account of Western civilization's attempts to deal with madness throughout history. If there is any moral to this story, it's that none of the treatments really work all that well, and we still have a long way to go towards curing mental illness and ending the stigma associated with it.