{"id":512989,"date":"2026-06-01T12:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/512989\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T12:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:37:16","slug":"trying-to-research-aunt-idas-mental-health-may-prove-tricky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/512989\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Research Aunt Ida&#8217;s Mental Health May Prove Tricky"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"storyParagraph\">&#13;<br \/>\n                                        Breta Meria Conole was in a state psychiatric hospital for more than two decades, though the reason why is a family mystery. Debby Hannigan, her great-grandniece, tried for years to access Conole&#8217;s medical records via New York state, thinking they might hold clues to mental health issues in her family, including her oldest daughter&#8217;s depression. Hannigan was turned away, and her experience is hardly unique. Frustrated relatives have been pushing for law changes in states to allow the release of mental health records of long-dead ancestors, per the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newser.com\/article\/df3ae6af27ca1d51df9a98fdb34185a7\/how-state-laws-can-stymie-research-into-your-ancestors-psychiatric-records.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AP<\/a>. Their efforts have resulted in access policy changes in some states, but elsewhere, reforms are happening slowly or not at all. More:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> <strong>History:<\/strong> In the 1800s, the US saw a boom in state institutions for the confinement of people with mental illness. They were called lunatic or insane asylums, with the reasons for admission ranging from &#8220;brain fever&#8221; and &#8220;grief and anxiety&#8221; to &#8220;laziness,&#8221; &#8220;religious excitement,&#8221; and &#8220;desertion by husband,&#8221; per historical records. Some asylums gained reputations as brutal, overcrowded warehouses where patients were neglected and restrained. Asylums gradually became psychiatric hospitals, but practices didn&#8217;t necessarily improve: In the 1900s, they were the settings of since-discredited treatments like lobotomies and induced comas.<\/li>\n<li> <strong>Records:<\/strong> At some facilities, documents were likely damaged, destroyed, or lost over the years. Surviving documents may not be well organized or cataloged, but a lot of info still exists, says Dr. Laurence Guttmacher, a former clinical director of one of New York&#8217;s state hospitals, the Rochester Psychiatric Center.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Breta Meria Conole was in a state psychiatric hospital for more than two decades, though the reason&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":512990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[276],"tags":[222310,222309,18,20083,1652,135,142205,19,17,167,502,8403,171,222311,222312],"class_list":["post-512989","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-ancestor","tag-ancestors","tag-eire","tag-families","tag-family","tag-health","tag-health-records","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychiatric-disorders","tag-psychiatry","tag-relatives","tag-us-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116674890688702696","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512989","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512989"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512989\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}