Mental health question for older generation?

how was people with mental health problems dealt with in your day and what do you think has changed in the mental health sector now?

To be perfectly frank and speaking from my own recent experience of mental health problems that whilst things are not hidden away like they used to and the care of mental health patients has improved vastly and the majority of people are not kept under lock and key like they used to be years ago. Still that word 'Mental' has people taking a step back figurately speaking when I mention that I have suffered from post traumatic stress and was treated for depression.

Mental health has so many facets and so even today little is still understood by most of use. It will only be the mental health professionals that can take the stigma attached to mental health issues.

I'm not sure how old you are but there is a novel by Sebstain Faulkes that deals with this subject with great sensitivity and whilst it is only a novel the author has researched the subject in depth and has produced a great book dealing with Mental Health. Be warned though if you do decide to read it, it is book not for the faint hearted.


Good luck with what ever project you are undertaking. You are a brave person to want to learn about this subject. Most of us have an objective view on the matter and this is why I think that mental health care still has a long way to go. It needs people to more subjective and try to understand something that will afterall effect 1 in 4 of us during our lifetime.

Nettie UK lass.

I am not super old but old enough to know that back then people with mental problems were never talked about and they were kept out of the public veiw. Many were put in institutions. These days it is ok to mention things like depression and bipolar and it is not a bad thing to get help for mental disorders. Years ago if you had a mental problem it was like having some bad nasty disease that no one should know about.

When someone had mental health problems when I was young, they were looked upon as "weak willed". Everyone used to think that it was a matter of will and they just needed to "snap out of it!" Nowadays it is much more accepted and recognized as an actual illness, not just a matter of will. There is so much help out there now for people with mental illnesses, and for people that just feel the need to talk to a therapist. It used to stay hidden in the confines of offices, homes, and work. Now, it doesn't have to be that way, which is a wonderful thing. It's a necessary option to have now given the changes in today's world and the inability of some people to cope.
Good question.

In time past even the definition of mental illnesses was different. Most counties in the UK had a mental asylum and people think it was to hide folk away from view. In some cases it was but it was also a place of refuge because to leave these people in society was to condemn them to a life of abuse and ridicule. I was involved in closing a county asylum and the worst case I came across was a 70+ year old woman who was placed in the asylum when she was 15 for having an illegitimate child. Her family disowned her and she quickly became institutionalised and basically forgotten.

This generation of Doctors for mental health is in it for the money, Do you realize the amount of children now and in the 80 and up are told they have bipolar, or some kind of disorder,It scares me to death, a very big percentage of our population take something for something, Our generations coming up are all own some kind of meds and Prozac, that is terrifying to no , No will power week and have lost their self worth, Looking for a easy way out of life's every day problems, Pop a pill it will go away, give him riddlin because he wants to act like a normal kid, To me children that just sit their and do nothing is the weird kids, kids are full of energy and their parents life style dont fit their children's energy ..So parents try to live beyond their means, and have to have 3 or 4 jobs and the children have to sit or fetch for their self and no one is around any more for our children , so now they have no guidance no one to look up to but for maybe a good morning or see you to night or may be in a few days, So tv and the children at schools are raising each other, and the people of the world has lots it places in life, and they are calling it "mental" or bipolar, people have lost their Grip, and their purpose, So the solution is Pop a pill, In the day I never heard of such, and Some one would of said to me I am bipolar I would of said then move to the north pole, it is an escape goat for many that is Not going to do right because they are so self pity, the solution to all this is Pray and keep Hope, and self worth and will power,God bless the USA and Israel and All