Moral treatment | Quakers & Mental Health

Moral treatment was the main way that the Asylum treated patients. As an 1825 history of the Asylum explained, “Although the use of drugs and medicaments is allowed, in almost every case, to be indispensible, less weight is attached to it in the Friends’ Asylum, than to moral treatment” (Waln 15). The Asylum implemented moral treatment, which involved almost every aspect of the patients' lives, by treating the patients as much like rational beings as possible, and “inspir[ing] their troubled minds, on every dawn of intellect, and in every moment of calmness… with consoling evidence, that they were indeed regarded as men and brethren” (Waln 4). Treating the patients like rational beings meant using restraint only as a last resort, to ensure the safety of the patient and those around him or her, not as a punishment. Under moral treatment, the superintendent and keepers treated the patients as individuals, and helped them to try to regain control of themselves. Some important facets of mo

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• Elena Churilov