How were people with mental illnesses treated in 1700?

Answer 1

The majority received no treatment as such, as it was still believed by many that "madness" was an affliction of the soul, rather than of the body or mind. However, attitudes were changing by this point, and so there was a little more understanding than, for instance, 50 years before.

The majority of those with severe mental illness (madness) were placed in work houses or prisons, with a select (often rich) few being committed to primitive "madhouses", the forerunners of asylums that would develop over the next two hundred years. As in the majority of human history, those suffering from more mild mental illness (depression, mild forms of schizophrenia, etc) where instead characterised as suffering from emotional problems - "melancholy", having "black moods", etc.

Answer 2

There was a small pot that was used to urinate in. There was also a big pillow or pill of hay that was used as a bed. They had a single blanket and that was all. There were big locks on the doors and no windows. Mental hospitals in the 1700s were like sort of like jail cells. If you want to see a real 1700s mental hospital you can go to colonial Williamsburg and go to the art museum. They have a mental hospital room from the 1700s and 1800s and some things that were use in the hospital.