Essay On Mental Illness In The 21st Century

Stigmas of Mental Illness: From the Stone Ages till 21st Century
Introduction
Mental Illness has existed years ago since the beginning of recorded history. The term that was used during the ancient times and now has varied immensely. Today, the current term used to describe the condition of mental illness are psychopathology, mental disorders, and abnormal behaviour. During the earlier times, many terms such as madness, insane, maniac, and lunatic were used to describe a person with mental illness. Although there were many different terms that were used to label the condition of mental illness, all the different terms refer to comparatively the same type of behaviour (Maher & Maher, 1985).
Besides understanding the differences between the terms used in

In the early centuries, mental illness revolves around the domination of religious or spiritual explanations. Many beliefs were within the cause of evil spirits, demonic possessions as well as wrath from the gods. But, in the 17th century, there was a rise in the explanation of mental illness from madness to a physical state cause. Also, during the time there were a massive increase of poor people with mental illness were being confined in a workhouses, hospitals, jails and private asylums (WHO, 2003). In addition, many of the early medical explanation of mental illness were all inhumane and no compassion towards the people. Mentally ill person were being punished for their morality. In the 18th century, many mentally ill people still living in poor conditions and mental illness were seen as incurable disease. Thus, people with mental illness were confined in jails, hospitals or public asylums which later became a humanitarian concern. During the 18th century, moral treatment were introduced to many institutions and this led to community care growth in the