CIE Views on Moral Treatment of Mental Illness

This is a conversation between Ralph Allison and Faith, a Guardian CIE. Actually, if you look historically, the best thing was called Moral Treatment, back about 1500 to 1600 where they took the...

person Ralph B. Allison, M.D.
CIE spirituality mental-illness treatment ethics

This is a conversation between Ralph Allison and Faith, a Guardian CIE.

Ralph: Actually, if you look historically, the best thing was called Moral Treatment, back about 1500 to 1600 where they took the people into the house of the doctor and his wife was there and his kids and they had them working on the farm, and they treated them in a polite, gentle form. Faith: OK

Ralph: Those people improved, in contrast to those sitting in hospitals getting everything. F: Because they were treated as individuals.

Ralph: Right F: Ok, the other ones are not. They are treated as numbers.

Ralph: They are numbers, they are in the way, F: They are treated as labels, pure and simple. So how do you expect the Essence to realize that their responsibility is the furthest that, what they are trying to do is the nurses run away from these individuals, you have the doctors who run away, or want to control them, you have the drug therapy, they give much drugs and see if they can control them that way. That does not work.

Ralph: So you are saying that these people who have shown over a long period of time that they are not interested in getting well, that we shouldn't do anything with them. F: Of course. Leave them alone.