Question

3. How has societal viewpoints concerning mental illness or health influenced human services over the past three centuries?

Answer 1

Hi! You didn't mention where you're focusing on in this essay. The following applies to mental illness in western nations. Things were different elsewhere in the world. And this is a very oversimplified version of events. It's a complex issue. I know all this from majoring in anthropology and history in college. And reading a lot of Foucault. That's been awhile, so you'll want to fact check all of this. This does not directly address your question, but I hope it helps.

Middle Ages: People saw mental illness as possession or depravity. The mentally ill were assumed to have tainted souls or even be in cahoots with Satan (e.g. Salem's witch trials). Madhouses popped up during this time, and were infamous for the abuse of inmates.

In the early 1700s, partially because of Enlightenment ideas (science and whatnot), society began to recognize that mental illness was physical, not spiritual. Mental illnesses began to be classified, studied, and treated. (Although "treatment" sometimes meant that inmates were whipped, chained, etc.) Medical doctors became involved in the these madhouses (now called lunatic asylums), which were quite lucrative. Toward the end of this century, a movement began for more humane treatment of inmates.

1800s: Also known as the "the great confinement," this was the century when asylums hit their peak. Asylums became large and crowded. In North America especially, the proportion of the population diagnosed with mental illness grew significantly. Poor or marginalized people were more likely to be diagnosed with mental illness and confined to asylums.

1900s: The beginnings of psychoanalysis. At this point, asylum inmates were referred to as "patients" and treated with (slightly) more dignity. Psychology was developed as a profession. Sterilization, eugenics research, and experimentation were performed on mentally ill patients. Nazi Germany is infamous for advancing this kind of unethical research. In the 1960s, at the same time civil rights campaigns were gathering speed, Americans began to call for an end to asylums. Asylums closed, and voluntary mental health programs grew. Limits were placed on the kind of research that could be performed with human subjects. In the '80s, the movement halted and progress toward social justice (true not just of mental illness, but other movements as well). Reagan cut the new Mental Health Systems Act, which reduced funding to asylums, which immediately increased the number of mentally ill homeless people (and later increased the number of mentally ill prisoners).

Whoa...I wrote way too much. I got too excited about history. :D In conclusion, check out these resources for more info:
http://www.nami.org/template.cfm?section=federal_and_state_policy_legislation
http://www.state.nj.us/humanservices/dmhs/home/index.html