A mental illness is known as any condition that can influence a person in the way they feel, behave, think, or how they interact with their surroundings. Different illnesses can have different ranges of symptoms, from mild to severe. The harshness of the indicators depends on the mental illness one has. If an illness is left untreated, that person could appear to be unable to cope with life and their daily routines and demands. The lack of treatment can be caused by someone’s financial status, lack of insurance, or even lack of government funding. But first, someone has to understand the history of serious mental illnesses to understand how to go to today’s overview of it. 

The method of how mental illness has progressed over the decades is a good representation of the way trends in cultural understanding can influence national policy and society’s understanding of various topics. Back in the middle ages, different cultures viewed someone who had a mental illness to be demonically possessed or in desperate need of religion. This is what led to the degrading of mentally ill patients and the stigmatism that was pushed towards them. It was in the 1840s when someone began to notice the disgusting living environment that patients lived in. Dorothea Dix demanded better living conditions for mentally ill patients. After forty years, she finally got what she wanted and persuaded the government to fund for the building of thirty-two state psychiatric hospitals. President of the time, Harry Truman, passed the National Mental Health Act which then created the National Institute of Mental Health. This program provided government funds to help research the cause and treatments of mental illness (Module 2). As the population of the institutions drastically increased, they became understaffed and underfunded, which once again led to filthy living conditions for the patients. By the mid 1950s, while the living conditions continued to decrease, outpatient treatment began. Unfortunately, as the patients were back out in society, living their normal lives, people began to react negatively. As the stigmas progressed, people with mental illnesses started to keep away from society; forcing themselves into unemployment. While unemployed, they were unable to have access to insurance, leaving them undiagnosed and untreated. 

The United States has the highest frequency of diagnosed mental disorders compared to the rest of the world; this includes mood disorders, anxiety disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorders, substance abuse, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, impulse control disorders, social phobias, etc. In just one year, twenty-seven percent of adults in the U.S. experience symptoms of a mental illness. Walton found that almost one in two people have a chance of being diagnosed with some kind of mental health disorder in a lifetime. That number increases to fifty-five percent for someone who reaches the age of seventy-five. The numbers will continue to increase if these people do not get the proper diagnosis and proper treatment to help themselves. 