Historical Perspective
Human Services
Chapter Three
Burger & Youkeles, (2003)
Introduction
When people need help to whom should they turn?
 Who, in society should be “my brother’s keeper”?
 Who should be helped and who should be left to their own
devices?

Prehistoric Civilizations





.
Evil spirits were given credit for anything that could not be easily explained.
Animism: spirits inhabit inanimate objects.
KEY POINT: Deviant behavior is a product of what is the norm for behavior at a given point in time.
Early Civilizations


Pythagoras: brain is center of intelligence
Hippocrates: Natural explanation



diseases were primarily physiological or organic in origin.
Developed psychiatric labels: melancholia, mania, epilepsy
Treatment: vegetable diets, exercise, and tranquil lifestyle




Even as early physician and philosophers shape views on human nature, practice remained cruel and isolating.
Family & wealth often determined fate.
Then Christianity emerged and the spiritual explanation returned to the forefront of understanding.
The Middle Ages




Exorcism re-emerged as the prevalent treatment.
As the Church gain power it also became sanctuaries for poor and infirmed.
Church espoused belief that the wealthy should provide for the poor.
Social roles of “rich and poor” became ingrained.




.
Power struggles between Church and state ensued (tithes).
.
The Renaissance




Tradespeople became the middle class.
Contemporary human services roots: social welfare needs means feeding and
sheltering needy people.
Since the Renaissance

16th century: The Elizabethan Poor Law
 A system for providing shelter and care for the poor.
 Really a system for controlling social structure
 Could work: workhouses
 Could not work: almshouse

 Early
forerunner of _________________
Industrial Revolution

1800’s brought human's mastery of machines.






Protestant Work Ethic: hard work, thereby accumulation of wealth led to a virtuous life.
Calvin: God punishes the poor, leave them to suffer.
Spencer: Social Darwinism: let them die off in natural order
Most helping programs still have controlling the masses as a core reason for helping.
Early Reform Movements
Late 1800/Early 1900’s




Settlement House movement: Responsibility of society to help, and held the human services perspective:
attitude it was the environmental circumstances rather than personal inadequacy.
Hull-house, Chicago, Jane Adams: birth of contemporary social work

Progressive or Social Justice Movement: Change through political action and legislative reform.


Using Hull house as the hub, she created a comprehensive network of services in the neighborhood.
Liberal ideas, minimum wage, pension systems, six day work week, unemployment and child labor laws.
The Depression and WWII

1930’s





Stock market crash
Relationship between circumstance and human problems became clearer.
FDR’s New Deal
Social Security Act
.
.
.

1940’s





Conservatism emerged
“too much help robs incentive”
World War II veterans needed help
Family structure changed
Social Unrest: 1960-1980

Civil unrest: war, poverty, social oppression, women’s rights

War on Poverty increased opportunity but did not eliminate poverty and
discrimination.

1970-1980 Massive programs across the lifespan
Human Services
and Mental Illness

Human Services:

Assistance based on socio-economic needs

Issued based:
 Poverty




Work skills
Mental Health Services

Largely based on pathology model


Biological origins
Environmental Influences



Mental Health Services
Since the Renaissance


Mental health is directly influenced by social conditions, adequacy of shelter
food and income.
Mental health is also influenced by individual life experiences, biology and
individual/family coping.
Early Asylums

Asylum


A place for protection and shelter
FOR WHOM?




The mentally ill person?
Society?
Sometimes these were people who held views different from the government not
necessarily those with a true illness.
The best and the worst

1409-current day
 Valencia, Spain


 Admission was voluntary

1547: St. Mary’s of Bethlehem (Bedlam)
 Good intention but in practice became a dungeon for the deviant.
 Locked up, cruel treatment, lack of food, long term periods of changing
walls.
to
Era of Humanitarian Reform





In late 1770’s early 1780’s a brief era of reform occurred
This movement was also called ______
It started in Europe, Frenchman Pinel started unchaining some patients and
tried to cure them through good care.
Dorothy Dix was also a strong force in the reform movement. She gathered
public support for the much need humanization.
She helped to create 32 state mental hospitals where the emphasis was caring
for sick people
The downside to the state mental hospital
system



During 1900’s emphasis became the individual treatment plan but
maintained need for hospitalization
Freud’s influence
By the 1920’s and 1930’s his theories became so widely
accepted that they were adopted as the treatment of
choice by most institutions.
 The second mental health revolution began with
____________.

Deinstitutionalization & Decentralization



Early 1950’s brought the development of ___________ and again
changed who treatment was provided.
___________ was the policy that care should be given in familiar
community settings.
____________ meant housing patients from the same communities
in the same wards.
Community Mental Health Movement

Traditional System
 Focus on treatment
 Distance created isolation from families
 Long term, individual therapy model
 Treatment provided by a short supply of

psychiatrists
Community System


Focus on prevention
Family becomes a resource and focus of the treatment


Innovative methods, family therapy, crisis hotlines, outreach programs
Treatment provided by psychologist, social workers, counselors, and various
paraprofessional staff
Pros and cons

Advocates of the community mental health system point to:

Critics counterpoint to :
Advent of the Generalist Human Services
Worker
Original term (1960’s) _____________
 Common characteristic of the role:

 Direct and frequent contact
 Variety of work settings

 Multi-technique
Activities of a General Human Service
Worked

In home/In community services





Development of community support and programs
The Future





While social problem have remained the same across the ages, contemporary society has
become far more complex.
Technology adds to our lives yet often increases anxiety (e.g. replaced workers, and the
knowledge of nuclear war)
Funding is being reduced and agencies must find news ways to provide services.
Human services in one of the largest growing job classifications.
Newest challenges are to provide multi-ethnic and culturally aware services.
Chapter Review

Please read and review the chart on pages 148 and 149 in
the Burger and Youkeles Text (6th edition)

Summarize what you have learned from the history of
human and mental services as you form your answer to
the essay question on helping.