individuals affected by mental health all over the United States of America
Many individuals are affected by mental health all over the United States of America. Records dating as far back as the 1670s points out that mental health facilities ‘madhouses’ were in existence. Approximately one in five American adults are affected by mental illness each passing year. It brings the sum to about 43.8 million individuals. However, mental health has far much improved positively over the years, but the stigma is still affecting most folks. As history suggests, the mentally ill were treated very poorly since people associated with mental illness with demonic possessions, witchcraft, or gods. If someone was possessed, there were a variety of forms of treating them(C Lahariya et al. 2010)
. Exorcism was widely used in the 1800s, mostly done by priests prayers done in the presence of the affected. According to CNN reports daily, most Americans view mental health and physical health as equal. Mental health and overall well-being are connected to our ability to function well at work and how we picture the world around us.
History of mental health treatment
There were different forms of psychological therapy. For instance, trephination, this was one of the earliest forms of mental health treatment. It is dated back around 7,000 years ago and was done to treat headaches, psychiatric disorders, and problems with demonic possessions. (L Rosenberg, 2011). Trephination involved the removal of a small part of the skull to conduct the intended treatment. There is no much evidence suggesting this kind of mental therapy. Bloodletting and purging is another kind of mental illness. It was widely known all over the western world in the 1600s, with its history in ancient Greek medicine. Claudius Galen was a Greek physician and believed that mental health illness was due to imbalanced humor in a patient. On the other hand, an English Physician, Thomas Willis, used Galen’s theory to treat mentally ill patients and added his argument that mental health illness was due to an internal biochemical relationship disorder. The said humor imbalances were meant to be corrected by bleeding, purging, vomiting. However, these forms of treatment were not only used to treat mental illness, diabetes, asthma, cancer, but cholera was also some examples that physicians in this form of therapy.
Mental health illness has been prominent since the 1600s, and mental health treatment had not been developed, and it was related to madness. Patients who displayed symptoms of madness were locked away from the community, and, in most cases, we’re left to die in inhumane situations. It greatly affected the patient’s family as patients who were locked away felt they weren’t like them. Specialized institutions were built to restrain the criminally insane. There were those families who would afford to pay a doctor, and therefore, their patients would be imprisoned and treated at the ‘madhouse,’ but this did not guarantee their recovery. They would not have any way to fight for their release because no one was allowed to contact anyone or have visitors come around (T Evans-Campbell et al. 2012). As of the 18th century, the science of psychiatry began to develop in terms of treating the mentally ill in the society, and this wiped out the belief of evil spirits causing mental disorders. Doctors studied how the brain and the nervous system are connected and what causes mental illness, leading to the development of medical treatment.
Reference
C Lahariya, S Singhal, S Gupta – Indian journal of …, 2010 – ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
L Rosenberg – The Journal of Behavioral Health Services & Research, 2011 – Springer
T Evans-Campbell, KL Walters… – The American journal …, 2012 – Taylor & Francis