Emma Laaian

● When people think about mental health, they often picture someone

What is Mental
who is either depressed and can’t function or they picture those who

have to be put into the hospital. Often we think that since we don’t fit
health? into either of these stereotypes of mental health we assume we aren’t

affected but that is far from the truth.

● Mental health is a person’s condition in regards to their

psychological, emotional, and social well-being and mental health

can affect how we feel and act.

● National Alliance on Mental Illness, approximately one in five

Americans experience mental illness each year. This comes out to be

about 18% of the population with the majority of them being people

ages eight to fifteen.

● In 2017 51.5 million people in the United States experienced mental

health issues.
Mental Illnesses
● When it comes to it there are a few factors that can play into someone

dealing with mental illness such as biological factors that deal with brain

chemistry. Life experiences such as trauma or abuse can also be a factor

along with a family history of mental illness. For illnesses such as bipolar

disorder, which is a disorder associated with episodes of mood swings

ranging from depressive lows to manic highs.

● Bipolar deals with the first factor where the chemicals in the brain are

unbalanced. For those with depression, brain chemistry can come into

play but often it's life experiences that affect them the most.

● Clinical depression is characterized by persistently depressed mood or

loss of interest in activities, causing significant impairment in daily life.

The danger of
● Different stigmas that society has about mental health such as are just

being dramatic and making things up or it's all in their head, can be very

Stigmas ●
harmful to those dealing with a mental illness.

They can lead people to internalize negative beliefs, feel shameful,

isolate themselves and shy away from getting the proper help they need.

● For some this may be a cultural thing such as in some Asian cultures

seeking help may go against values of emotional restraint and avoiding

shame. Another example of this is in some African American

communities, which distrust the mental health care system, these can all

be barriers to speaking out.

● As time has progressed the stigmas surrounding mental health has gone

down a little and more people are being open about their struggles.
Taboo Subject
● When it came to treating mental illness there were many ways

that they tried to treat it; starting about seven thousand years

ago where a part of the skull was removed and they believed

this would get rid of the illness.

● This is similar to the 1600s where the western world believed in

bloodletting and believed that withdrawing blood would cause

any issues to disappear, as the issues were within the blood.

● In the seventeenth century, if you had a mental illness you were

put into a jail-like institution where you could never leave.

Inside of these institutions, there were concerns with

overcrowding and poor hygiene care among other issues.

 ● It wasn’t until 1840 where people became somewhat

Outrage
aware of what was happening when a woman by the

name of Dorothea Dix did research on how patients were

treated in these institutions. She ended up writing to the

general assembly of North Carolina and she outlined

different ways people were being treated such as being

chained to their beds.

● In the 1880s an outrage was sparked due to a writer by

the name of Nelly Bly who pretended she had a mental

illness for a newspaper article and documented

everything that happened in the institution. It was with

this report that people started to care about what the

institutions were doing and a movement was started to

get better conditions.

 ● Mental health is a very important topic and we

Teenagers are seeing an increase within young adults. In a

2017 census, they found that suicide was the

tenth leading cause of death overall and the

second leading cause for those aged 10 to 34.

● At San Diego State University they found that

there was a generational shift in mood disorders

and found one of the changes was that there was

a 63 percent increase of young adults aged 18 to

25 from 2009 to 2017 that reported having

symptoms of depression.
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