Mental Health Persuasive Essay

In June of 2016 Iowa was ranked 49th out of 50 for the best mental health care. Mental health is being treated as if it is not a real issue in the state of Iowa. I have learned that in the past few weeks that mentally ill patients are not getting the proper treatments. Today I will be trying to persuade you about the mental health care issues we have today and how we can fix these issues to help better the patients and our communities. I will do this by first discussing the problems of mental health care, second discussing the solutions to this problem, and finally how it can be used to impact people in the future.

The problem we have today is, Patients that don’t get the proper treatment can harm themselves or someone else. The reason why

Some say that this is not an option due to how much it cost to keep a health facility running thus why Iowa only having 2 mental health facilities left after Governor Branstad recommended and approved in Dec. 2015 that Clarinda and Mount Pleasant hospitals be closed. (Leys and Pfannenstiel) Yet I have found that when mental health facilities were first made every patient had a job. These jobs being a range of farm work to sewing. When they did this it cut the cost of food, clothing, and repairs. This also helped the patients be attuned to how normal living was like outside of a mental health facility which helped the patients from returning to the facility once they were able to return home. Thus solving the problem of “Institutions by their nature, Foster helplessness and dependency.” (Seder) With the addition of new mental health facilities we would be adding new jobs for nurses and doctors. Another issue that has come up is that mental health facilities use improper treatment. This leading to the consideration of the facility being a “snake pit.”(Sederer) Some examples of treatment are electroshock therapy, deep brain stimulation, and magic mushrooms. (Vann) With these forms of treatment people are worried that they are dangerous to patients like they were when we first started using them, however with the advancements of medicine we have learned ways to use these treatments without causing