Journal 1-Voluntary Madness: 2/24/09

Krissy has base knowledge about mental hospitals and asylums because she did a year long research project on schizophrenia. While Krissy had a lot of knowledge, Neil has a very limited knowledge when it comes to mental hospitals and mental illness. Norah Vincent, the author of Voluntary Madness, willingly admitted herself in a mental hospital for 18 months. She suffers from depression and was in a mental hospital before.



Some common biases about this subculture are that all of the patients are violent and unsafe for society. Many have problems with addiction and most outsiders view all of the mental hospital patients as crazy. Most people in the hospitals are probably totally harmless yet they have this negative cloud hanging over their head because they are in the mental hospital. Some people would be afraid of them if they encountered them on the street and the mental patients are looked down on.



As a group, we want to learn what the mental hospital system is really look contrary to every one's outside biases. Sometimes the biases will be true, yet we want to really see "behind the scenes". We want to see what really goes on inside a mental hospital, behind closed doors, to see what these patients have to go through each and every day. It will be interesting to see Vincent's experiences while in the mental hospital because she will be living there, instead of just doing research and writing about her findings. Also her encounters and experiences with her fellow patients, and to see if she can successfully blend into the crowd and be deemed "mentally ill".



We decided to choose this book overall because it was a very bold, out there thing for a person to do. Krissy picked this book because she did a research project on schizophrenia and she was interested in the topic. Alecia chose this book because she has always been interested in psychology and the way the brain works; coinciding with mental patients and if their brains function differently than everyone elses. Neil picked the book because it is a topic that is very interesting to him. He knows little about mental health and mental health facilities and would like to get informed.



This topic is significant to us now because it gives us better insight to how our social structure treats people with mental illnesses. Many people have biases and stereotypes that may not be true about mental patients, and we are interested in finding out if they are true or not. We are interested not in what these doctors claim in front of a board, but what actually occurs to these people once they are admitted to a mental hospital.