Mental Health: Where We’ve Been & Where We’re Going

In the distant past many cultures viewed mental illness as a punishment from the gods or a demonic possession. In the less distant past and even up until the 1960s in our own country, individuals with mental health problems were confined, often un-hygienically and sometimes brutally, in state-run psychiatric facilities. As mass institutionalization gave way to more community-based mental healthcare, some of these situations clearly changed for the better.

On the other hand, with mental health issues now being part of a cause-and-effect relationship with conditions like homelessness, incarceration, suicide, and violence, with mental health . . .