{"id":615206,"date":"2026-06-01T12:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/615206\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T12:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T12:31:11","slug":"trying-to-research-aunt-idas-mental-health-may-prove-tricky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/615206\/","title":{"rendered":"Trying to Research Aunt Ida’s Mental Health May Prove Tricky"},"content":{"rendered":"


\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’s medical records via New York state, thinking they might hold clues to mental health issues in her family, including her oldest daughter’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 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

History: 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 “brain fever” and “grief and anxiety” to “laziness,” “religious excitement,” and “desertion by husband,” 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’t necessarily improve: In the 1900s, they were the settings of since-discredited treatments like lobotomies and induced comas. Records: 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’s state hospitals, the Rochester Psychiatric Center. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Breta Meria Conole was in a state psychiatric hospital for more than two decades, though the reason…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":615207,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[209363,209362,6270,2864,102,103262,1906,6623,7125,20494,24503,56,54,55,209364],"class_list":["post-615206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mental-health","tag-ancestor","tag-ancestors","tag-families","tag-family","tag-health","tag-health-records","tag-mental-health","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychiatric-disorders","tag-psychiatry","tag-relatives","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=615206"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/615206\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/615207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=615206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=615206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=615206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}