Provide+an+overview+of+mental+health+laws+during+the+twentieth+century,+including+what+it+means+to+be+committed.+Have+things+changed+much+in+the+21st+century?

The relationship between mental illness and violence has always been in an issue when debating mental health laws and policies. Many people see “mental health laws” as different from “public health laws”. During the 1970s, people with mental illnesses who were affected by mental health laws were acquainted in an “empirical vacuum”. Over the past 30 years, research that doctors and scientists have done have filled this “empirical void” and made it so that the law had an impact of care between relationships, non-violent, and made it a sustainable community. Some questions that were researched by these professionals were focused on the state’s use of their legal authority in order to achieve the goals they wanted in the hospitals. These goals were attained by using violence and limiting the freedom of the patients with mental illnesses. While most of the law’s concern has been dealing with the violence and the abuse of the patients, they have also gone to means to try to expand patients’ autonomy and being able to make their own decisions when it comes to their own health.

In the beginning of the 20th century, psychiatric institutions were notorious for “poor living conditions, lack of hygiene, overcrowding, ill-treatment, and abuse of patients; many patients starved to death.” If one was committed, then they were forced to stay in a psychiatric ward for an indefinite period of time regardless of whether the patient wanted to leave or not. In the Rosenhan Experiment, eight people feigned mental illnesses in order to gain access to psychiatric wards. They were all completely healthy, but they were forced to stay an average of 19 days and all, but one of the patients were diagnosed with schizophrenia in remission. The patients were only released when they admitted they were sick and agreed to take antipsychotic pills. When in the wards, the patients reported dehumanization by the staff and constant labeling. They were subject to verbal abuse and the staff talked in extent about them, in front of them, like they were not even there. This experiment, "accelerated the movement to reform mental institutions and to deinstitutionalize as many mental patients as possible".


 * The World Health Organization reports that in many instances national mental health legislation takes away the rights of persons with mental disorders rather than protecting rights. **




 * President Truman signed the National Mental Health Act in 1946, which called for the establishment of a National Institute of Health. The Act came to be after the realization that there was a high percentage of mental health issues post World War 2. **


 * Bibliography **

"Deinstitutionalisation."Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#20th_century. Wikimedia Foundation, 4 May 2013. Web. 7 May 2013.//

//"Our History by Decade." Centennial Celebration. Mental Health America, 2008. Web. 08 May 2013.//

//"National Institute of Mental Health - Organization - The NIH Almanac - National Institutes of Health (NIH)." U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 12 Oct. 2011. Web. 08 May 2013.//

//"Patients as Prisoners, Jails New Mental Health Institutions." //CBSNews //. CBS Interactive, 05 Mar. 2013. Web. 08 May 2013.

YouTube. YouTube, n.d. Web. 08 May 2013.