Many believed that mental illness was some sort of punishment placed upon people religiously. It was seen as a problem that needed to be fixed back then, beginning in the 1960s, it became a problem that was severely ignored and overlooked. Negative attitudes towards mental illness began in the 18th century in the United States, leading to a bad outlook of mental illness, and unhealthy confinements of mentally ill individuals usually called psychiatric hospital, psych ward, etc. In the 1800s, a woman named Dorothea made efforts to improve mental health care in America. She examined how people that were mentally ill and poor were cared for, and she discovered that there was a very low funding system that caused very bad situations for the people suffering. Disturbed by this, Dorothea began attempts to influence the decisions of government with various state legislatures and demanded the U.S. Congress to provide for mentally ill and poor people. She was the reason why Asylums came into the picture for mental health people in the united states. Although this was a big difference from the efforts the U.S had before, the asylums were not very homely and did many terrible procedures on the patients residing there. Over the year though, as asylums began to be called “psychiatric hospitals”, the care slowly became better. …show more content…
Efforts to have more community-based mental care options that were less restrictive begin a little after the civil rights movement. While those efforts were successful for many, a significant amount of people were unhelped because of funding