Mental Health Essay

According to the Facts and Numbers page on the National Alliance of Mental Illness website, "One in four adults--approximately 61.5 million Americans-- experience mental illness in a given year. One in fo17-- about 13.6 million-- live with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder." (Facts and Numbers). Throughout history people with mental illness have been perceived as lesser than those without mental illness, and thus these people have an innumerable amount of difficulties and challenges to overcome compared to their counterparts with the benefits of pristine mental health. In The Mad Among Us by Gerald N. Grob, he describes the change of the ways of caring for the mentally ill starting from the beginning of institutionalization in the early eighteenth century (Grob 17) to the idea that serious disorders cannot be cured, but alleviating the symptoms "should be able to remove the obstacles that stand in the way of natural self-healing processes." (Grob 311). The lies of people with mental illness are as diverse as the disorders they live with. Unimaginable obstacles are waiting around every corner for people with mental illness.
Treatment is helpful in trying to cure or lessen the effects of mental illness while still causing major difficulties for those suffering from the illness. In his book, A History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter describes the first use of electroconvulsive therapy by Roman psychiatrist, Ugo Cerletti, in April of 1938 in attempt to cure or less the effects of mental illness, even though "[a]s the patients thrashed upon the table, they were at risk of breaking limbs and fracturing vertebrae." (Shorter 223). Knowledge has not always been as advanced as it currentl...

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...nstitutions where they received the medications, treatments, therapy, and care that they require to function properly, but were unable to access in the outside world. The disorders may get worse for these people without proper supervision, but the health care system is selfish and only thinks of the financial gains and not of the needs of the patients. America provides it's mentally ill citizens with a health care system that does not view them as a high priority and instead views them as a liability.
Mental illness is a problem affecting a large majority of the world's population with approximately 450 million people worldwide suffering from these complex diseases (Mental Disorders Affect One in Four People). Similar to other major diseases humans experience, mental illness provides people with an abundant amount of disputes and boundaries they must surmount.