Mentally Ill In Society Today

Improved Essays
In society today there are many different populations that are looked at as different or not normal. The mentally ill are one of them and how they are treated did not just start happening today it has been going on for years. The affect it has on the assistance that is available to those that are mentally ill is completely amazing and leaves some of the mentally ill population with little to no assistance beyond family members.
Society in a lot of areas look at the mentally ill as members that have behavior that is considered outside of what is normal and appropriate (Martin, 2014). This attitude toward the mentally ill has been one that started long before today and lead to institutionalizing the mentally ill in the past so they were
…show more content…
In 1963 the Community Mental Health Centers Act (CMHC) was passed and approved funding for a new mental healthcare system that was focused on prevention and community based care (Martin, 2014). The CMHC was passed in 1963, but even today that amount of assistance and care for the mentally ill is limited. The mentally ill in today’s society are still looked at as different and not able to live in normal society due to how they are judged. We offer assistance for many different populations in society today, but when we look at what is offered for the mentally ill, they are still being judged like they were in the past. I live in a major city in Colorado and we have only one hospital in a city that has a population over 400,000 people that will offer the mentally ill assistance. That says a lot about how we treat a population within our society that may not have a choice of how the act or the deal with the issues they have. Assistance for the mentally ill is still being limited today due to how as a society we still look at those with a mental illness as outside of the normal spectrum of

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    In the article “Stigma of mental ill health is 'worse than the illness”, Jeremy Lawrence talks about how people who are mentally ill are becoming discriminated against by ordinary people and that not a lot of people are helping or paying close attention to these people who are in desperate need of help. The mentally ill people are stigmatized because their illness. This author claims that people are deviant due to their irrational behaviors in treating the mentally ill people without care or sensitivity. They are deviant because they are making the situation worse by comparing them to celebs, abusing them, and increasing the rate of the illness. Mentally people are being criticized and discriminated in a wrong way, which can…

    • 999 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Now in the 21st century mentally ill people our more accepted in society. Help is more accessible for the people that really need it. There is a bad side to what is going on today, the asylums and prisons are still overcrowded it. In the past the main point of having people in prison was for people to have time to reevaluate themselves and then be released once again, now it seems like that is not even important for prisoners to become better…

    • 527 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Patients with mental illness are not always treated fairly and they are often taken advantage of. One of the patients that I was caring for recently had been not endorsing his bowel movement status for a whole week. He was refusing treatment…

    • 330 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The treatment of people with mental illnesses and handicaps has been a long lasting problem because of the misunderstandings of police, mental hospitals, and society. Many documentaries and movies have been made to show the lives lead in mental hospitals and institutions. News reports have talked about police shooting suspects who have been mentally ill. Most of these events could have been avoided if people could try and learn about mental illnesses, instead of hiding them away from the rest of the world. Just because they are physically or mentally different from the norm, society expects them to be maintained at an institution like dogs in a dog pound.…

    • 2391 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    Jfk Mental Health Case

    • 1568 Words
    • 7 Pages

    In 1963, President John F. Kennedy (JFK) signed into law the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963 (CMHCA). The law was intended to deinstitutionalize patients from mental health hospitals and demonstrate a compromise between public health and medical practice models (Cameron, 1989). The law offered States financial incentives to build community-based outpatient centers to replace hospitals (Cameron, 1989). Due to the complexity of public health and treatment, the law has been revised numerous times since its implementation (Mental Health Commission Report, 2003).…

    • 1568 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    During this time period, mental illness was still looked down upon. In 1970’s President Nixon impounded funds for the National Institute of Mental Health. The problem of mental illness was being brought to light as a result of the lack of services for mentally ill people. The lack of services made mental illness more noticeable and left many unstable people homeless, which got the attention of the media. Although media coverage was present, people weren’t concerned with mental illness and many families treated it as a private matter and didn’t share if they or a loved one were suffering.…

    • 805 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Our social safety net is poor despite all we spend on health care; this means that despite initiatives to keep those who are most vulnerable to poverty from falling below poverty level, it is hard to do so (Rachlis, 2005). Mentally ill patients are discriminated against in the workplace because they are seen as independent or unreliable. This makes it more difficult to find a steady source of income and avoid falling into poverty levels. Institutionalization may treat some patients but when these facilities close down and the patients are put back into the environment that made them ill, it does no good. This illustrates the “revolving door syndrome” in…

    • 2044 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Additionally, as a society, we label mentally ill people. They are labeled as dangerous and violent. This leads for people to feel fear towards them. Another example from the video “The Released” mentally ill people would be trespassing someone’s house and the first thing these people would do is call the police. They don’t help them because they feel fear, and that is just cruel.…

    • 1026 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    The United States has perpetuated a culture of silence and denial surrounding mental illness. In the 1960s and early 70s, the U.S. began the process of “deinstitutionalization,” and, according to journalist Joe Nocera, this process has become a national disgrace (2012). Deinstitutionalization refers to the policy of closing public hospitals and moving the mentally ill to private community-based mental health service providers (Torrey 1997). However, community-based mental health service providers are few and far between, and the development of deinstitutionalization has had severe impacts on the criminal justice system. Through the movement of deinstitutionalization, jails and prisons have been forced to accommodate those with mental illness.…

    • 1290 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    History shows that people with mental illnesses suffered through stigmatizing effects of being treated as a person of lower value. At times the individuals get treated as though they’re not able to do basic tasks such as everyone else. I found this to transpire into todays society as well because people still undervalue those that suffer from a mental illness. Furthermore, it makes the family and the mentally ill person afraid to seek help due to the feedback that society gives to…

    • 1176 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Treatment of Mentally Ill Offenders There is a major issue with the mental health treatment in our society. With much of America increasingly being diagnosed with a mental illness, it is still a much stigmatized disease. It is estimated that one out of every five Americans have been diagnosed with a mental disorder ranging from mild to severe. Yet, the extent of therapy and support programs available for the mentally ill is considerably insufficient. Deinstitutionalization ultimately had a negative impact on our society and was responsible in criminalizing the mentally ill.…

    • 1063 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Inmates are the main group that is affected by this issue. The inmates who are considered to be “normal” by societies standards may feel uncomfortable around the mentally ill inmates and not know how to act around them. They may also feel cheated, because the mentally ill inmates may get special treatment and privileges because of their condition. But, the real victims are the mentally ill inmates, who are a constant target from the moment they arrive in prison or jail. In fact, there was a “report on the shocking prevalence of inmate abuse at the Rikers Island correctional facility” (Bennett, 2016).…

    • 1456 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    America’s approach when the mentally ill commit violent crimes is locking them up without hesitating if it is the right thing to do. The mentally ill are constantly thrown in to jails or prisons because there is nowhere else to put them in, which automatically causes things to get worse. Mentally ill offenders are being mistreated, instead of getting treatment. They need help in order to get better, and having them hostage is not a way of doing it. That is why they should be sent to a mental health care facility, rather than a prison.…

    • 991 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The definition of mental illness is as follows: “A condition which causes serious disorder in a person’s behavior or thinking” (Oxford Dictionary). Within John Steinbeck’s famous story, Of Mice and Men, the character Lennie suffers from a mental disability, which ultimately leads to his death. In a similar way, millions of people suffer from a form of mental illness, and are often are not treated for their disorders, which frequently ends in a form of tragedy for the individual. Often, those around them are uninformed on the subject and they either become bystanders to the individual’s downfall, or treat the person as an ill-mannered idiot. Within some countries, such as the United States of America, the nation’s leaders are trying to bring their societies out of these “dark ages,” and give the current and following generations the education they require on this subject.…

    • 1156 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    In today society, there is more than 2.3 million who are being held in jail and prison. In 2010, there were 330,000 mentally ill patients in jail or prison (Hunt, 2011). In the last two decades the number of people incarcerated has been on an unprecedented rise. The number of people in prison, jail, and Federal Prison are on the rise due to gang violence, the war on drug, the stiff penalty they give first time offenders, and the number of mentally ill people who are in prison or jail. Instead of send these mentally ill inmates to a hospital or some form of mentally health place to help deal with these people.…

    • 2159 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Great Essays