There was some organized challenge to psychiatry in the late 1870s from the new speciality of neurology, largely centered around control of state insane asylums in New York. Practitioners criticized mental hospitals for failure to conduct scientific research and adopt the modern therapeutic methods such as nonrestraint. Together with lay reformers and social workers, neurologists formed the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. However, when the lay members questioned the competence of asylum physicians to even provide proper care at all, the neurologists withdrew their support and the association floundered.
The!re was some organized challenge to psychiatry in the late 1870s from the new speciality of neurology, largely centered around control of state insane asylums in New York. Practitioners criti,cized mental hospitals for failure to conduct scientific research and adopt the modern therapeutic methods such as nonrestraint. Together with lay reformers and social workers, neurologists formed the National Association for the Protection of the Insane and the Prevention of Insanity. However, when the lay members questioned the competence of asylum physicians to even provide proper care at all, the neurologists withdrew their support and the association floundered.