Mental Illness In Colonial America

Mental illness has been around since the days of recorded history. People such as Aristotle, Thomas Overbury, and Jean de la Bruyere have studied the personality disorders. However, through history, people with personality disorders have been shunned and feared because of who they are.

Section 504 requires school districts to provide a free appropriate public education (FAPE) to each qualified student with a disability.

The issues of mental illness have been around from the start of human existence. Mental illness is considered any psychiatric disorder that cause untypical behavior. Questioning happened more in the 1930’s when more problems came around and how to fix it began to arise. Mental illness included the diseases, the cures,

THESIS STATEMENT Disability labels are used by many professionals as an important unit of the special education process. This is mainly in large regard to how it is conducted in the United States. However, the ordered mandate use of disability labels has been criticized by many parents, schools, and child advocacy groups around the country which have strong concerns due to the unintended, latent, negative repercussions that tend to come from disability labeling (Bernstein, 1976). Disability labeling identifies informative definitions which are used to determine eligibility requirements for education(Bradley, Danielson, Doolittle, ,2005).

In the late 1800’s people with mental illness weren 't accomdated like people are today. Often people with illnesses, such as bipolar disorder, we 're teased and forced to lock themselves in a room away from civilization. No one truly cared for those with mental illness or tried to find out ways to accomdate them in school or regular life. Even when mental hospitals became more helpful those suffering from different illnesses would rather stay at home in fear than to seek professional help because of the risk of getting teased or called pathetic. The mentally ill patients were made prisoners, sent to alms houses or forced to remain at home because the first colonist believed they were “sick in the head” due to practicing

Before the eighteenth century, mental illness was thought to be a problem spiritually. Whenever people started acting weird ,they were thought to be wracked with sin or even possessed by demons (“The Asylum Movement”, 1997). One woman, Dorothea Dix, became a reformer for mentally ill patients. Dix was not alone, however. In addition, a woman named Nellie Bly, a journalist, also helped show the inhumane treatments of the mentally ill.

So many federal laws and regulations have paved the way for individuals with disabilities to be able to have the equal opportunity for success. Education was not always an option for everyone, there was a time when receiving an education was a privilege. When writing about IDEA Garguilo states that “we consider this law to be one of the most important pieces, if not the most important piece, of federal legislation ever enacted on behalf of children with special needs” (page 45). This law allowed for all children with disabilities to receive a free appropriate education. IDEA changed the way for these individuals allowing for a: FAPE, LRE, IEP, procedural due process, nondiscriminatory assessment, and parental participation.

Section 504 is applied if a student's condition does not meet the criteria specified under IDEA but meets the criteria specified under this law ( Colarusso & O’Rourke, 1999). The American with Disabilities Act (ADA), signed into law 1990 and amended in 2008, broadens the scope of section 504 into the private sector. The ADA’s impact on students is most noteworthy in the area of reasonable accommodations in academic program (Russo & Osborne, 2009). The schools that in full compliance with section 504 should not have any issues to abide with the requirements of the ADA.

According to research, African Americans tend to have more shameful attitudes towards individuals with mental illness compared to European Americans (Ward et al, 2009; Poussaint & Alexander, 2000). Within African American culture, admitting one has mental illness is sometimes viewed as a personal weakness or lack of faith (Ward et al 2009; Boyd-Franklin, 2003). This perceived stigma often deters African Americans from discussing their mental health concerns with family and professionals. For Black women in particular, the issue of stereotype has been an overlapping factor affecting the use of services for mental illness. Sexual objectification can be linked to mental health problems among African American women. Objectification theory hypothesizes

Whereas mental asylums in the 1870s focused on methodology, lunatic asylums in the early 1900s tackled the issue of sanitation and communicable diseases. Beginning in 1912, the Indian Government, under the influence of the Britain, passed the Indian Lunacy Act of 1912.14 This act specified guidelines for the management of mental asylums, including various procedures for admissions and standards of care.14 At this time, changes were also occurring structurally within the mental asylums in Britain.14 These changes were transforming the care of the mentally ill into a more professional setting.14 As a result, British India underwent similar transformations to the structure of their cells and the status of mental conditions. For instance, controlling

Mental Illness in the 1800's: something needed to be done If you had a mental illness in the 1800's you'd be put into an asylum which usually had horrible conditions. Thanks to Dorothea Dix that is not how we treat mentally ill people today. Dorothea Dix reformed society by showing the gov. how people were treated in these asylums and wanted to make the conditions better by, for example putting in libraries.

The categories of disabilities are; autism, deaf/blind, deafness, hearing impaired, mental retardation, multiple disabilities, orthopedic impairment, serious emotional disturbance, specific learning disabilities, speech or language impairment, traumatic brain injury, visual impairment including blindness, and other health impairment. To be eligible, a student must have a disability that adversely affects her or his educational performance and must need special education in order to receive an appropriate education. Found at: IDEA (The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act). (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2015, from http://www.help4adhd.org/en/education/rights/idea Helpful Organization Websites/Contact Information

Then how can they do their work by themselves?” Well, if the student has a disability, then it is the teacher’s responsibility to give the student work that is right for them. Then, it is the student’s job to do the work that is being asked. Have you ever heard of an IEP education? Well, if the teacher does a bad job teaching, then it is the student’s responsibility to go to study with another teacher.

Mentally ill offenders comprise a huge segment of the country 's prison populace, bringing about various difficulties to correctional administrators who lack formal preparation or instruction on the best way to communicate, look after, and secure this specific populace (Pittaro, 2017). Correctional administrators confront a large group of difficulties with regards to mentally ill inmates. These particular inmates require more supervision and more care with respect to their prosperity in the correctional facility that they reside in. In most facility, the mentally ill prisoners are restricted to the minimum about of counseling services which may prompt troublesome practices. As indicated by an article written by Lloyd I. Sederer, M.D., "All patients have both a right to treatment and a right to refuse treatment (Sederer, n.d).”

Why do the people of today still associate stigma, shame and blame with mental health issues? Mental health issues are extremely and widely misunderstood. Despite the fact one in four people are likely to experience some kind of mental health problem a year in the United Kingdom. “Mental health is a person’s condition with regard to their psychological and emotional well-being and it affects how we feel, think and act. It also helps to determine how we handle situations such as stress, how we relate to others and how we make decisions. Considering mental health issues are so prominent in our day to day lives, why is it that they’re so vastly misapprehended?