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Mental illness is an unhealthy behavioral or mental pattern.
History
Hundreds of years ago, due to the superstition of the time, people believed that mental illness was caused by demonic possession. Society later viewed mentally ill people as criminals and forced them into prisons and asylums. Dorothea Dix (1802–1887) was one of the first people who saw mental illness as an illness and not a crime and supported investment in mental hospitals in the USA and Europe.
Doctors often treated mental illness with a lobotomy, which destroyed the patient's personality but made them easier to control. The USSR was the first country to recognize the inhumanity of psychosurgery. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy signed the Community Mental Health Act, which freed many mentally ill people from asylums. Chlorpromazine (Thorazine), first developed in the 1950s, treated schizophrenia and led to some people being freed from asylums.[1]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Princess Harmony (2024-01-05). "Newsom’s reactionary approach to mental illness" Workers World. Archived from the original on 2024-01-06.