Worldwide, mental health became a topic around the Middle Ages, however, it was in a very negative light. Those that were considered to be mentally ill were thought to be possessed or evil. In the United States, mental health first really pops up around the eighteenth century. While there were mental health treatment centers, patients were treated poorly and humiliated, being made to live in unsanitary and at times, unsafe conditions.
Almost half a century later, in the 1840s, a woman by the name of Dorothea Dix became a prominent mental health advocate. Dix was one of the first individuals who pioneered and pushed boundaries to fight for better treatment and living conditions for those suffering from mental illness. Most fascinating about Dorothea Dix was how she was driven to be a mental health advocate because of her own mental illness struggles. After visiting jails and other mental health institutions as a Sunday School teacher for women, she saw the horrendous conditions with her own eyes. As she traveled across Massachusetts visiting other institutions, she was motivated to make her findings known and call for a change. In a “Memorial to the Legislature of Massachusetts 1843,” Dix wrote, “I proceed, gentlemen, briefly to call your attention to the present state of insane persons confined within this Commonwealth in cages, closets, cellars, stalls, pens! Chained, naked, beaten with rods, and lashed into obedience.” (2)
After receiving a good response from Massachusetts officials, Dix continued her path to reforming mental healthcare. She proposed the “Bill for the Benefit of the Indigent Insane” to policymakers and it was presented to Congress in 1854. If enacted, this bill would have supplied ten million acres of federal land for the purpose of being sold to be used as land for mental health asylums for the indigent or disadvantaged. However, while it was passed by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the president at the time, fourteenth U.S. President Franklin Pierce vetoed the bill. Pierce made his decision based on his belief that any social welfare issue should be handled state by state, and not on a federal level. Though this decision momentarily discouraged Dix, she continued on. Over the course of her 40 years of mental health reform work, she pushed for the U.S. government on a state by state level to fund thirty-two more psychiatric hospitals in states such as New York, Rhode Island, and Indiana, and improve ones that already existed.
The next wave of the mental health movement came about fifty years later, with Clifford Beers’ book, A Mind That Found Itself, written in 1908. Beers’ novel sparked the Mental Hygiene Movement. His book uncovered the mistreatment he experienced in a mental institution in which he was confined to, and Beers later founded two well-known organizations: the “Connecticut Society for Mental Hygiene,” now known as “Mental Health Connecticut,” and the “National Committee for Mental Hygiene,” which is now known as “Mental Health America.”
Fast-forward to about one hundred years later, in October of 1963, the Community Mental Health Act was signed into law by President John F. Kennedy. This law allowed for alternatives for individuals with mental health illnesses other than state-funded mental health hospitals to seek treatment. There were three main initiatives of this bill: the first, already mentioned, to provide access to those with a mental illness on a community-based level, the second to establish inpatient and outpatient clinics, and the third applied more specifically to Congress, which was to have greater funds to educate and train professions to be able to provide treatment. In essence, this bill provided a better transition and more support for the mentally ill to still remain a member of their communities and not to simply isolate them in a hospital away from society.
The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 sparked the modern era of mental health in the sense that it allowed for more options for individuals who needed support or education on mental health illnesses. Because of this law, individuals who had or were suffering from mental health disorders were finally starting to be given a fighting chance at being an active member in their societies, and as a result, already existing and new mental health awareness organizations became better-established.