Mental Illness In American Culture

Mental illness is probably the most misunderstood and abused illness in American culture. It was and still is an illness that is rarely discussed. The stigma surrounding it was so strong it was looked upon as a crime. Patients would be “put away” to not necessarily to be treated but to shield them from the public. This stigma has continued. In the media, the mentally ill are often times portrayed as the violent and unpredictable criminals that terrorize the normal people. They are still viewed as outcasts and completely misrepresented today.
The general public has always discarded, avoided, and shamed the mentally ill. Colonial Americans referred to them as “lunatics”, a derogatory term that is still used today. The colonists lacked any knowledge of medicine and determined the causes of mental illnesses to be affiliation with the devil. Therefore, in a Puritan dominated culture, the mentally ill were removed from society and locked away where they could be treated. The treatments that they used are considered inhumane and barbaric by today’s standards, but accepted by the colonists of the time …show more content…
For example, the lead character in Monk has obsessive compulsive disorder. He regularly attends therapy and takes his prescribed medications, yet he has not improved. They emphasize the stereotypes that mental illnesses are incurable and treatments are ineffective (Tartakovsky). Rarely, when slight progress is made, patients are still not stable enough to reenter society. They are never integrated into the world outside of the institution or shown with any association such as friends or family from the outside world. Typically, all of the scenes in movies take place inside the asylum. However, when the patients are allowed outside, some problem always occurs that reinforces the idea that they cannot function normally and should be kept away from those who can