Mental health is a crucial part of our being and has a profound effect on how we live our lives. It determines how we socialize, how we reason, how we deal with our emotions, and how we handle stress; and when impaired and/or neglected, it can have crippling effects on the way in which we function on a cognitive or even physical level. Anyone can become susceptible to mental illness or compromised mental well-being. However, throughout history mental health has often been overlooked by society and mental illness, in particular, has been long stigmatized. This has left many of those affected untreated, poorly treated, destitute, and even outcast from society. Through education and the changing attitudes of society, mental health treatment has …show more content…
These facilities provided “custodial care”, meaning they served as supervised shelter or confinement, rather than a source of effective treatment (Chow & Priebe, 2013; Glazer, 1992). Conditions were unfavorable and not much was being done to alleviate the state of the mentally ill. After much pressure from social activists to combat the issue of the poor living conditions of the mentally ill, the United States government eventually provided land and funding for the establishment of over 30 state psychiatric hospitals by the end of the 19th century (Grob, 1994; Unite for Sight, n.d.). Under this system of institutional care, the mentally ill could receive care and treatment from professional staff in a more structured environment, which seemed more promising than previous solutions. However, many of these institutions were underfunded, overcrowded, and operating with inadequate staff, leaving room for poor living conditions, the abuse of patients, and frequent human rights violations (Chow & Priebe, 2013; Dowdall, 1999; Unite for Sight, nd.). These factors, combined with the development of psychiatric drugs between the 1930’s and the 1950’s, drove the movement towards deinstitutionalization (Dowdall, 1999; Smoyak,
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
The fight for improved health care for those with mental illness has been an ongoing and important struggle for advocates in the United States who are aware of the difficulties faced by the mentally ill and those who take care of them. People unfortunate enough to be inflicted with the burden of having a severe mental illness experience dramatic changes in their behavior and go through psychotic episodes severe enough to the point where they are a burden to not only themselves but also to people in their society. Mental institutions are equipped to provide specialized treatment and rehabilitative services to severely mentally ill patients, with the help of these institutions the mentally ill are able to get the care needed for them to control their illness and be rehabilitated to the point where they can become a functional part of our society. Deinstitutionalization has led to the closing down and reduction of mental institutions, which means the thousands of patients who relied on these mental institutions have now been thrown out into society on their own without any support system to help them treat their mental illness. Years after the beginning of deinstitutionalization and after observing the numerous effects of deinstitutionalization it has become very obvious as to why our nation needs to be re-institutionalized.
In the 1800’s people with mental illnesses were frowned upon and weren't treated like human beings. Mental illnesses were claimed to be “demonic possessions” people with mental illnesses were thrown into jail cells, chained to their beds,used for entertainment and even killed. Some were even slaves, they were starved and forced to work in cold or extremely hot weather with chains on their feet. Until 1851, the first state mental hospital was built and there was only one physician on staff responsible for the medical, moral and physical treatment of each inmate. Who had said "Violent hands shall never be laid on a patient, under any provocation.
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
There were patients who had chronic illnesses and were subdued by restraints and sedation up to 1950s. Moving forward towards the 60’s, the criteria of hospitalization started to change when questions on how well asylums worked and the ethical problems with patient care was raised (West, 2010). Due to the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 these institutions started to close all around the states and shifted away from rural to urban areas. Psychiatric hospitalization had a new criterion stating that an individual had to pose a threat to themselves or others and or show evidence of severe psychiatric illness that renders him or her gravely disabled (Caple,
Mental healthcare has a long and murky past in the United States. In the early 1900s, patients could live in institutions for many years. The treatments and conditions were, at times, inhumane. Legislation in the 1980s and 1990s created programs to protect this vulnerable population from abuse and discrimination. In the last 20 years, mental health advocacy groups and legislators have made gains in bringing attention to the disparity between physical and mental health programs. However, diagnosis and treatment of mental illnesses continues to be less than optimal. Mental health disparities continue to exist in all areas of the world.
For many decades the mentally ill or insane have been hated, shunned, and discriminated against by the world. They have been thrown into cruel facilities, said to help cure their mental illnesses, where they were tortured, treated unfairly, and given belittling names such as retards, insane, demons, and psychos. However, reformers such as Dorothea Dix thought differently of these people and sought to help them instead. She saw the inhumanity in these facilities known as insane asylums or mental institutions, and showed the world the evil that wandered inside these asylums. Although movements have been made to improve conditions in insane asylums, and were said to help and treat the mentally ill, these brutally abusive places were full of disease and disorder, and were more like concentration camps similar to those in Europe during WWII than hospitals.
Most of the idea of deinstitutionalized movement was because of the patient’s rights. Being out of the institutions gave the individuals more freedom, they didn’t always see the same four walls or the same people every day. In 2005 many severely mental ill individuals did not receive any psychiatric treatment. About half of the many that are severely mentally ill were homeless.
Continuing budget cuts on mental health care create negative and detrimental impacts on society due to increased improper care for mentally ill, public violence, and overcrowding in jails and emergency rooms. Origins, of mental health as people know it today, began in 1908. The movement initiated was known as “mental hygiene”, which was defined as referring to all things preserving mental health, including maintaining harmonious relation with others, and to participate in constructive changes in one’s social and physical environment (Bertolote 1). As a result of the current spending cuts approaching mental health care, proper treatment has declined drastically. The expanse of improper care to mentally ill peoples has elevated harmful threats of heightened public violence to society.
Mental illness is more common than one would like to believe. In reality, one in five Americans will suffer from a mental disorder in any given year. Though that ratio is about equivalent to more than fifty-four million people, mental illness still remains a shameful and stigmatized topic (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.). The taboo of mental illness has an extensive and exhausting history, dating back to the beginning of American colonization. It has not been an easy road, to say the least.
In 1955, over 559,000 individuals resided in inpatient psychiatric hospitals. By 1995, however, the number had drastically diminished to 69,000, (National Health Policy Forum, 2000). This drastic reduction was largely due to the discovery of antipsychotic medications in the 1950s, and the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1960s, wherein several thousands of mentally ill individuals were released from psychiatric institutions to return to their communities for treatment. Mental health centers (MHCs) were conceptualized during deinstitutionalization to provide treatment to these newly-released mentally ill persons in their communities. Although efforts were well-intended, the MHCs failed to serve the neediest subset of individuals. Instead, they served those who had minor psychiatric diagnoses and needed little treatment. As a result, the United States experienced an increase in the number of homeless individuals, most of whom still exhibited psychotic symptoms. Involuntary Outpatient Commitment (IOC) was created to serve those “forgotten” mentally ill individuals without placing them back in institutions. Ideally, IOC will increase community tenure for the severely mentally ill, decrease the likelihood of decompensation, and provide the necessary treatment by means less restrictive than hospitalization, (Borum et al., 1999).
n Milos Forman’s movie One flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest demonstrates the inhumane mistreatment of patients within a psych ward. Nurse Ratched, a very controlling and power-hungry nurse has demoted all her patients to sheepish submissive beings. Randle McMurphy shows up and creates chaos in Nurse Ratched’s order. This causes Ratched to resort to the only solution she sees feasible, abuse and eventually lobotomization. As the film portrays, the mentally ill weren’t receiving proper treatment until mental illness was taken seriously by doctors and deinstitutionalization occurred. Unlike McMurphy’s treatment, deinstitutionalization in the 1960s impacted mental illness treatment positively and created a more societal acceptance of people with mental illness.
Mental disorders are rapidly becoming more common with each new generation born in the world. Currently, nearly one in two people suffer from some form of depression, anxiety, or other mental health problem at some point in their lives (Editor). With so many people suffering from their mental illnesses, steps have been taken in order to get help needed for these people but progress has been slow. In the medical world, hospitals are treating those with physical problems with more care than those with mental problems. Prescription drugs can only do so much helping the mentally ill go through their daily lives and more should be done to help those who need more than medicine to cope with their illness. Mental health should be considered just as important as physical health because of how advanced physical healing is, how the public reacts to those with mental illness, and due to the consequences that could happen if the illness is not correctly helped.
It is deeply alarming that ignoring mental health is systematically ignored as an important part of health promotion. This is shocking because, in theory, mental health is recognized as an important component of health, the close link between physical and mental health is recognized, and it is generally known that physical and mental health share many of the same social, environmental and economic components. We know that facilities dedicated to those with mental health problems are more vulnerable to the resources of physical diseases in many parts of the world, and it is essential that mental health promotion should not be equally affected
Our society today does not value our mental health like it should. If society would only pay as much attention to mental health, they would be better off in the long run. Think about an athlete playing a sport, they certainly understand how important physical health is. When a baseball player injures his knee, he is out and waits until it heals. But like many people, mental health is overlooked. Most teenagers do not realize that the many things like stress or eating disorders are coming from a poor mental state. They think that if they just ignore it they will snap out of it, this is not true and many times this kind of thinking will only make it worse (Change Your Mind). Mental health is not seen as important as physical health due to misconceptions and stigma behind mental health patients. By increasing the importance of personal mental health, people can reduce issues associated with mental health problems and raise awareness for people who suffer from mental health issues.