Columnists

Sometimes I think there is a conspiracy to prevent persons with mental illness from doing "too well." It just seems odd to me that when someone with mental illness starts to do well, a number of unfortunate events will arise to knock the person back down to an earlier level. -more-

From 1770 to 1820 in the United States, the mentally ill were routinely confined to prisons and jails. In the 1840s, activist Dorothea Dix lobbied for better living conditions for the mentally ill after witnessing the dangerous and unhealthy conditions in which many patients lived. Over a 40-year period, Dix successfully persuaded the U.S. government to fund the building of 32 state psychiatric hospitals. By the mid-1950s, there was a push for deinstitutionalization and outpatient treatment began, facilitated by the development of a variety of antipsychotic drugs and a move toward community-oriented care. It was thought that psychiatric patients would have a higher quality of life if treated in their communities rather than in isolated mental hospitals. -more-