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Moral Treatment

 

Moral treatment, made vivid by images of Pinel striking the chains from the inmates of the Bicêtre asylum in 1793, but better illustrated by William Tuke’s contemporaneous development of the York Retreat, brought us the principle of minimal use of coercion and the understanding that patients’ self-control can be enhanced by respectful treatment in a home-like environment and by rewards rather than punishment. Eighteenth-century private madhouse operators tried to outdo one another in optimism, by extolling the likelihood of recovery from mental illness if only family members would seek their services in a timely way.