Prairie madness or prairie fever was an affliction that affected settlers in the Great Plains during the migration to, and settlement of, the Canadian Prairies and the Western United States in the nineteenth century. Settlers moving from urbanized or relatively settled areas in the East faced the risk of mental breakdown caused by the harsh living conditions and the extreme levels of isolation on the prairie. Symptoms of prairie madness included depression, withdrawal, changes in character and habit, and violence. Prairie madness sometimes resulted in the afflicted person moving back East or, in extreme cases, suicide. Prairie madness is not a clinical condition; rather, it is a pervasive subject in writings of fiction and non-fiction from the period to describe a fairly common phenomenon. It was described by Eugene Virgil Smalley in 1893: "an alarming amount of insanity occurs in the new Prairie States among farmers and their wives." Causes Prairie madness was caused by the isolation and tough living conditions on the Prairie. The level of isolation depended on the topography and geography of the region. Most examples of prairie madness come from the Great Plains region. One explanation for these high levels of isolation was the Homestead Act of 1862. This act stipulated that a person would be given a tract of 160 acres if they were able to live on it and make something out of it in a five-year period. The farms of the Homestead Act were at least half a mile apart, but usually much more. Although there were thriving Indigenous nations and communities, there was little settlement of Europeans on the Plains and settlers had to be almost completely self-sufficient. The lack of quick and easily available transportation was also a cause of prairie madness; settlers were far apart from one another and they could not see their neighbors or get to town easily. (In many areas, towns were usually located along the railroads and 10–20 miles apart—close enough for people to bring their goods to market within a day's travel, but not close enough for most people to see town on more than an infrequent basis. This particularly applied to women who were often left behind to tend to family and farm while the men went to town.) Those who had family back on the East coast could not visit their families without embarking on a long journey. Settlers were very alone. This