[Insert Name]
HCS/550 – Health Care Policy
[Date]
[Insert Professor Name]
Health Policy Determinant Timelines
Mental health affects us all. How we think and feel about our lives and ourselves has an impact on our behavior and how we cope in tough times. Mental health illness include conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease, anorexia, anxiety, bi-polar disorder, bulimia, depression, hyperactivity, insomnia, mania, narcolepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic attacks, paranoia, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), schizophrenia, stress, suicide and Tourette's.
The timeline of mental health policy in the United States is a representation of the ways in which trends in psychiatry and cultural understanding of mental illness influence national policy and attitudes towards mental health. The United States is considered to have a relatively progressive mental health care system and the history of its evolution.
5th century B.C
“Many cultures have viewed mental health illness as a form of religious punishment or demonic possession. In ancient Egyptian, Indian, Greek, and Roman writings, mental illness was categorized as a religious or personal problem” (Knapp & etc. 2011). Hippocrates was a pioneer in treating mentally ill people with techniques not rooted in religion or superstition; instead, he focused on changing a mentally ill patient’s environment or occupation, or administering certain substances as medications.
1800s
In the 1840s, activist Dorothea Dix lobbied for better living conditions for the mentally ill after witnessing the dangerous and unhealthy conditions in which many patients lived. Over a 40-year period, Dix successfully persuaded the U.S. government to fund the building of 32 state psychiatric hospitals. This institutional inpatient care model, in which many patients lived in hospitals and were treated by professional staff, was considered the most effective way to care for the