Mental health has a “month.” So what?

In the late 1800s, a Yale University graduate named Clifford Beers was hoping to escape the mental illness and tragedy that had plagued his relatives. He wasn’t successful. Beers suffered with depression, anxiety, hallucinations, paranoia and suicidal ideation, and in his mid-20s, his family committed him to different mental hospitals. Beers reported that hospital staff abused and degraded him, causing him even more emotional trauma with their brutal and inhumane treatment. Beers emerged from this “mental civil war” with a new weapon in the fight: an autobiography titled A Mind That Found Itself, which became the foundation of America’s mental health reform movement.