America and Mental Health

Few people are aware that May is National Mental Health Awareness month. Mental health is a serious issue for mankind and is also a difficult matter to experiment on. Not to mention treating patients with mental health issues has altered tremendously in the past 50 years. Every year there is a fundraising event called the National Alliance of Mental Health (NAMH).

It is an event that was developed due to thoughts similar to that of Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. As a primary speaker at last year’s NAMH Dingell addressed the question “When are we going to start talking, in our society, about mental health and mental illness?” She exclaimed that growing up mental illness was always swept under the rug and not discussed even though she grew up with people that were diagnosed with mental illness.

America turned on a bright light after John F. Kennedy sent a series of proposals to fight against mental illness. He said in his speech “These afflictions have been long neglected, occur more frequently, affect more people, and can require more prolonged treatments and can cause more individual and family suffering than any other condition in life. I think that mental health awareness has since then been taken more seriously today. As Americans it is our duty to spread awareness of mental health so that those diagnosed feel more human than “insane.”