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Ringing out hope: for 100 years Mental Health America has been working to improve the well-being of all citizens.

Article Excerpt
At the turn of the 20th century, Wall street financial Clifford W. Beers was so distraught over of illness and death of his brother that he attempted to take his own life by jumping out of a third-story window. Suffering with bipolar disorder, he subsequently was hospitalized for three years in private and public institutions in Connecticut. But our of his misery Beers emerged with firsthand knowledge of what it meant to be mentally ill in early 20th-century America--and how the country could better treat people with these diseases. His experience led him to help found what is now known as Mental Health America (MHA), a grassroots consumer advocacy organization that this year celebrates its centennial.

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Giving consumers a voice

While modern-day mental healthcare in the United States focuses on community-based services and people's potential to recover, this, of course, was not the case in the early 20th century. At the time people with serious mental illness could be placed in public institutions for long periods. As communities moved more elderly people with dementia into state hospitals, they became depressing places focused on custodial care, notes Gerald N. Grob, PhD, a professor at Rutgers and a mental health policy historian. Activists began to charge that psychiatric institutions were little more than prisons for people with mental illness. (1) Some patients alleged abuse, and Beers said he was placed in a straightjacket for 21 consecutive nights. He shared his story of mental illness and called for systematic change in his 1908 autobiography, A Mind That Found Itself.

"Until Clifford Beers wrote his book, there was precious little discussion of people severe mental illnesses," says Cynthia Wainscott, a past MHA chair. "Clifford Beers opened that door at a time when people with mental illnesses were not considered fully human. They were easily discarded. They were set aside from society and locked in institutions."

Determined to change the status quo, in 1908 Beers founded the Connecticut Society for Mental Hygeine. One year later he teamed up with philosopher William James and psychiatrist Adolf Meyer to create the National Committee for Mental Hygeine. Its goals were to improve attitudes toward mental illness and people with them, improve services, and prevent mental illness and promote mental health. This marked the beginning of the association known today as Mental Health America, which now has more than 300 affiliates in 41 states.

MHA's "biggest accomplishment over the last 100 years was launching the organized movement for...

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