mental health timeline

Hippocrates

400 B.C,

Greek physician Hippocrates began to treat mental illness as physiological diseases rather than evidence of demonic possession or displeasure from the gods as they had previously been believed to be. He encouraged rest, bathing, exercise and dieting.

Dorothea Dix

1840s

Dorothea Dix began interviews with people with mental illnesses when she realized these people were chained to beds, abused, and their homes looked like a prison. Mostly women were put into these asylums. She strived to create more institutions that were more based on their mental illnesses and to help them. She opened institutions and she even wrote books.

Nelly Bly

1880s

Nelly Bly posed as a mentally ill woman in an asylum to see what these people experienced. She wrote a book on her horrible experience to catch everyone's attention. She even published it on the newspaper. The institution was reformed after her experiences got published.

Sigmand Freud

1930s

In this time scientists including Sigmand Frued were beginning to dig deep into why people with mental illnesses act the way they do. hydrotherapy, metrazol convulsion, and insulin shock therapy were popular in the 1930s.

New York Medicine Academy

1940s

In 1944, the New York Academy of Medicine produced a study that claimed that an eight-week course of electric shock therapy could replace many years of mental hospital care.An even more drastic treatment for mental illness was psychosurgery. Psychosurgery was first practiced in the United States in 1936 by Walter Freeman (1895–1972). By the 1940s it was an accepted treatment technique. Psychosurgery involved cutting away parts of the brain that were thought to be malfunctioning. In 1941, two hundred Americans had brain surgery for mental illnesses such as depression, suicidal tendencies, and violent episodes. Surgeons used a long, hollow needle to disconnect the front parts of the brain (known as the prefrontal lobes) from the rest. By disconnecting them, doctors hoped to make patients calmer and easier to manage.

Daniel Blain

1950s

Daniel Blain, M.D., APA’s first medical director, responded to the need for

better communication, as well as the broader impetus for change, by initiating

the A.P.A. Mental Hospital Service Bulletin in January 1950. The Bulletin quick y evolved into a journal—now Psychiatric Services—whose purpose was, and is,

to help mental health clinicians and administrators improve the care and treat ment of persons with severe mental illness including instituations

1960s

this is one of the most significant times for mental health history. nurses and workers were trained to care for the mentally ill especially after the world war. infact many facilities were understaffed. they had livable institutions but the poor barely got help at all.

1970s

people began going public with their experiences in the industries and they began a movement to change laws and cruel therapies. in 1972 the Mental Health Research Fund with the Mental Health Trust and in 1973 combining, they renamed the organisation to the Mental Health Foundation.

In the 1970s, the U.K paved the way for modern mental health research by focusing on the day to day experience of people living with mental health problems at a time when research was mostly laboratory focused. Putting people with mental illness at the centre of the work and learning from them is something that they still do today, by ipushing peer-to-peer and self-management strategies that help people to help themselves and others

1980s

In the 1980s, the U.K developed a mental health research into an academic career. There were 49 psychiatry professorships in universities and medical schools compared with two it started.

the U.K had allocated £1.5m in research grants by the end of the decade to make landmark discoveries, for example, on the connection between physical and mental health, the cost of mental health problems, the relationship between mental health and brain chemistry.

the U.K. was instrumental in developing support for community care and rehabilitation schemes at a time where newly established community services couldn’t cope with demand.

they took steps to increase the influence of people with lived experience in mental health decision making, starting with funding the first service user consultative events in 1985. Following these events, they published a series of important publications and set up some mental health networks, including "Survivors Speak Out" (1986) and then in the years after, "Knowing our own minds" (1997), "Strategies for Living" (2000) and the "National Survivors User Network" (2003). These publications and networks helped people manage their own mental health and take control of their own lives. The Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 (MHSA) was United States legislation signed by President Jimmy Carter which provided grants to community mental health centers. In 1981 President Ronald Reagan and the U.S. Congress repealed most of the law. The MHSA was considered landmark legislation in mental health care policy

1990s

The U.K. identified areas for development and spent more money on social research for the first time, to work on the ground with people experiencing mental health problems. they made first attempts to provide community care and mental health experiences of young people and children, which was an area that had not been really explored before. they recognised that, "intervening effectively yields huge benefits in reducing a number of problems that are of concern to government, school, parents and children." Mental Health Amendments of 1990 was, a bill, but now a piece of legislation introduced on 1990-05-15 in the House of Commons and Senate respectively of the 101 United States Congress by Edward Moore (ted) Kennedy in relation with: Child health, Family violence, Geriatrics, Grants-in-aid, Health, Health planning, Homeless, Mental health services, Mentally ill, Minorities, Poor, Rural public health, Sex offenders, Social welfare, Suicide, Victims of crimes.

2000

President Clinton signed Children's Health Act of 2000

Building on eight years of improving the quality of health care for the U.S's children, Clinton signed the law of the Children's Health Act of 2000. This legislation expanded research and services for a variety of childhood health problems, re-establishing programs of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). it addressed the problem of youth substance abuse and the violence associated with it, and seeked to improve the health and safety of children in child care. The Clinton-Gore Administration improved the quality and access of children's health care by enforcing the largest single investment in children's health care since 1965, raising childhood immunization rates to an all-time high, and increasing access to care to more than 2.5 million previously uninsured children.

2002

NIMH published a national conference report entitled "Mental Health and Mass Violence which is an evidence based early psychological intervention for victims/survivors of mass violence. it was a workshop to try and reach the best research. While most people recover from a traumatic event in a slowly, the report indicates that early psychological intervention guided by qualified mental health caregivers can reduce the harmful psychological and emotional effects of exposure to mass violence in survivors. NIMH and the Department of Defense, along with other Federal agencies and the Red Cross, collaborated in the preparation of this report.

2003

Real Men. Real Depression campaign launched to raise awareness about depression in men and create an understanding of the signs, symptoms, and available treatments. The campaign was designed to inspire other men to seek help after hearing from real men talking about their experiences with depression, treatment, and recovery.

NIMH, with the University of New Mexico, hosted a regional public outreach meeting, Dialogue Four Corners, in April that focused on the Four Corners area of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, and Utah. Over 350 stakeholders including consumers and their families, health care providers, policy makers, advocates, and researchers gathered to discuss the impact of mental illness on American Indian and Hispanic populations living in rural communities and to help NIMH fix its future research on issues relevant to the community.

NIMH established the Limited Access Data Repository, the institute’s first effort to provide a place for large NIMH-funded clinical studies to submit their data for sharing. The site serves as a place to enable researchers to access datasets to conduct secondary analyses.

2004

The Treatment of Adolescent Depression Study (TADS), which is one of NIMH's 4 large-scale practical clinical trials, stopped important first phase results. The clinical trial of 439 adolescents with major depression found a combination of medication and psychotherapy to be the most effective treatment over the course of the 12-week study. The study compared cognitive-behavioral therapy with fluoxetine, currently the only antidepressant approved by the FDA for use in children and teens.

2007

several studies in the NIMH Intramural Research Program have shown that the drug ketamine relieves depression within hours and helped to clarify a possible mechanism behind this finding. since ketamine probably won't come into use as an antidepressant because of its side effects, the new results moved scientists closer to understanding how to develop faster-acting antidepressant medications. Current medications to treat depression can take weeks to have an effect.

findings from another NIMH clinical study—The Systematic Treatment Enhancement Program for Bipolar Disorder (STEP-BD)—revealed that people receiving medication treatment for bipolar disorder are more likely to get well faster and stay well if they also receive intensive psychotherapy.

a simulation study, conducted by Dr. Philip Wang of Harvard University and others revealed that providing even a small level of enhanced care for employees' depression would result in a cumulative savings to employers of $2,898 per 1,000 workers over 5 years. Savings from reduced absentees and employee turnover and other benefits of the intervention began to exceed the costs of the program by the second year, causing a savings of $4,633 per 1,000 workers.

2014

Army STARRS, the largest study of mental health risk and resilience ever conducted among U.S. military people, released its initial findings related to suicides and deaths in a series of papers. Among the findings the increase in suicide deaths from 2004 to 2009 occurred not only in currently and previously deployed soldiers, but also among soldiers never deployed; almost half of soldiers who reported suicide attempts indicated their first attempt was before enlistment; and soldiers reported higher rates of certain mental disorders than the civilians.

An NIMH-funded project, the BrainSpan Atlas of the Developing Human Brain, reported its first major findings towards its aim of a comprehensive three-dimensional atlas of the brain throughout the course of human development. The atlas, when complete, will profile gene activity across the brain, beginning prenatally.

2015

Investigators in NIMH’s RAISE project—Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode—reported reseatch that treating people with first episode psychosis with a special care program approach produces better clinical and functional outcomes than typical community care. Investigators also found that treatment is most effective for people who receive care soon after symptoms begin. NIMH launched RAISE in 2009 to explore see if using early and aggressive treatment, individually focused and using a variety of different therapeutic approaches, would reduce the symptoms and prevent the gradual change of functions that is a characteristic of schizophrenia. Based on RAISE results, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted an informational statement to show directors about creating treatment for first episode psychosis. The research represents findings of several agencies: NIMH, CMS’ Center for Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration(link is external). A key feature of this is CMS’ support for coordinated specialty care (CSC), the evidence based treatment approach tested in the RAISE.