Abstract

Moral treatment refers to a psychological approach to treating mental disorder that arose across Europe and North America around the turn of the eighteenth century. It is mostly associated with the French physician Philippe Pinel (1745–1826) and the English Quaker philanthropist William Tuke (1732–1819). Pinel and Tuke each independently developed their own distinct models of the once popular therapy known as moral treatment. Although moral treatment is often considered to have been a successful therapy in its early years, it was eventually replaced by custodial care on a mass scale and became a travesty of its earlier self.