How Taking Care of the Mentally Ill Has Improved

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Research Paper Mental illness has been a topic that more people have been aware of and have learned more about in recent years. According to Mayo Clinic, Mental illness refers to a wide range of mental health conditions — disorders that affect your mood, thinking and behavior. ... A mental health concern becomes a mental illness when ongoing signs and symptoms cause frequent stress and affect your ability to function. (Mayo Clinic Staff) Mental illness has been looked at as an undesirable thing and people with mental disabilities have been looked down on. Because of these attitudes, health professionals have taken more aggressive methods of treating these illnesses and ignored humanity (CHANGE WORD) in place of effectiveness; sometimes both of which were ignored in a vain attempt to change the patients. Technology and more knowledge have allowed health professionals to create less intrusive ways of treating the mentally disturbed. The changing attitude toward the mentally ill since the movement to deinstitutionalize them is illustrated in the housing opportunities, medical treatment, and psychological therapies. In any particular year, about 26.2 percent of adults in the United States have a detectable mental illness (“The Numbers”). Unfortunately, not enough hospital beds and places to stay are available for all of those people who need hospital care, so hospitals must move people out to make room for new patients. The space for mentally ill patients has always been low, but it has dramatically dropped in the past few decades. A movement involving deinstitutionalization occurred in 1965, and was advanced by society’s worries about civil liberties of patients. Courts then decided to regulate the amount of patie... ... middle of paper ... ...ness As Precursor to Long- Term Care Reform." Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (Apr. 2007): 1-8, 13. NAMI. Print. 16 Apr. 2014. Mayo Clinic Staff. "Mental Illness." Definition. Mayo Clinic, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. "NAMI - The National Alliance on Mental Illness." NAMI. National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d. Web. 08 Apr. 2014. "The Numbers Count: Mental Disorders in America." NIMH RSS. NIMH, n.d. Web. 28 Apr. 2014. Pribram, Karl H. "Some physical and pharmacological factors affecting delayed response performance of baboons following frontal lobotomy." J. Neurophysiol13.373-382 (1950): 80. Print. 1 May 2014. "Timeline: Treatments for Mental Illness." PBS. PBS, n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2014. Treatment Advocacy Center. The Shortage of Public Hospital Beds for Mentally Ill Persons. Rep. Arlington: Treatment Advocacy Center, n.d. Print. 1 May 2014.

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