In the Classroom: ‘This Is Still Happening Now’.
In Illinois in 1861, Reverend Theophilus Packard had his wife, Elizabeth, committed against her will because he considered her views on religion—as well as politics, parenting, and other areas—to be signs of insanity.
“Like Mrs. Packard, I didn’t know he could do that,” said Olivia D’Ambrosio, artistic director and lead actor in the Bridge Repertory Theater’s production of Mrs. Packard, during a recent visit to SB780: Mental Health and Public Health: A Social and Behavioral Perspective.
Carol Dolan, clinical associate professor of community health sciences, teaches the course, and also leads the Mental Health and Substance Use certificate. With tickets partially covered by the certificate program, Dolan sent her students from the course and certificate to see the play around D’Ambrosio’s visit. Lois McCloskey, associate professor of community health sciences, also led a discussion at a Sunday matinee performance.
“Even though this took place in the 1860s, there are so many things that are very current about involuntary institutionalization and how social factors like gender interplay with mental health,” Dolan said. “In some ways this story seems like it was a very long time ago, and in some ways it seems like it could have been yesterday.”
The play, by Emily Mann, tells the story of Packard’s three years at the Jacksonville Insane Asylum—where “treatment” included being dunked, naked, in vats of cold water—and eventual release as “incurable,” only to be locked up in her home by her husband. Finally, in 1864, the court case Packard v. Packard declared Elizabeth Packard sane. At that time the law in Illinois gave everyone the right to a public hearing before being committed against their will—with the exception of married women, who could be institutionalized based solely on their husbands’ judgment. Elizabeth Packard went on to campaign against that exception, with Illinois changing its law in 1867 and three other states making similar changes thanks in part to Packard’s campaign.
In mid-2016, D’Ambrosio read the play, “and I knew that it would be timely,” she says. Beyond questions Dolan and her students were already dealing with around the line between personal liberty and the need for care, D’Ambrosio said the play also raised broader issues about power and inequality. While the legal standing of women has changed, she said the deep-seated biases are still in place: “We don’t typically call men ‘crazy’ or ‘emotional’ or ‘hysterical.’”
D’Ambrosio also pointed to the current political climate, and steps backward in areas of acceptance and personal liberty. “To me, Theophilus, the husband, represents the people we need to understand,” she said, “people who have the need for such rigidity in the way the world works that they need to control the whole social order, because they’re so afraid of anything changing. We need to understand what they’re so afraid of, and to help them not be so afraid.”
Asked why Packard’s story was virtually forgotten before the play, D’Ambrosio said the timing was partly to blame—the events took place at the same time as, and were overshadowed by, the Civil War. Another important element, she said, is who looks bad in this story.
“We talk about gender as an important factor that interacts with how mental health and addiction are addressed,” Dolan said, both directly in areas like treatment and the law, and in broader societal perceptions and the stigma of mental illness. In media coverage of mental illness and addiction, she said, “we run into these same biases, determining which stories get told and which do not.”
After the class, student Cassandra Osei said the play was a valuable addition to the course. The discussion of power and bias was clearly also applicable to disparities in health and treatment of people of color and other minority groups, she said. “It’s about your freedom being taken away from you because someone who is usually cisgender, white, and male says you no longer deserve your freedom,” she said. “It definitely ties into this course very well.”