2021 Research, Creativity & Community Involvement Conference

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://scholarworks.montana.edu/handle/1/16222

The MSU Billings Research, Creativity & Community Involvement Conference (RCCIC) provides a great opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students of all majors to present their research and creative scholarship in a public forum. The conference is hosted every year on the MSUB campus, sponsored by the Office of Grants and Sponsored Programs, the University Honors Program, and Montana IDeA Networks of Biomedical Research (INBRE). The RCCIC is not a competition, but a celebration of the research and creative projects currently being carried out by MSUB students. All submissions are reviewed and approved by the sponsors prior to presentation or publication to ScholarWorks.

Browse

Filters

20211

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Tiry, Jessica

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    "Idiots and Distracted Persons:" Shifting Views on Mental Health in Eighteenth Century Colonial America
    (Montana State University Billings, 2021-04) Tiry, Jessica; Arendt, Emily
    With research deriving from many historians, and the help of Dr. Arendt, this project explores the eighteenth-century colonial period’s shifting views of mental health. These views during this time period were not solely based on religious standpoints, but medical aspects as well, as there was a new growth of knowledge into the strange minds of human beings. This would eventually lead Americans to view mental illness as a result of actions made by the individual. There were several influences which led to the shifting views on mental health, and each influence was connected and opened the path for another influence. These major shifts encompass changes from religious, political, and medical influences which tracked along one another in the eighteenth century. A major influence on shifting perceptions of mental illness was Native American traditions and beliefs, and minor influences that contributed to major intellectual shifts on mental illness include Cotton Mather, the father to modern medicine Benjamin Rush, and the role of natural law in American Colonies. Although medical explanations and treatments have drastically changed over three centuries, stigma towards those affected by mental illness has not changed since the eighteenth century. Colonial America opened the gates for medicine to be an answer to problems with the human mind, but stigma and treatment of these people were never changed—maybe these people will always be viewed as “idiots and distracted persons.”
Copyright (c) 2002-2022, LYRASIS. All rights reserved.