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Vulnerable Populations
The term Mental Illness covers a wide variety of disorders ,which can be mild to severe in nature. These disorders cause a breakdown in thoughts and behaviors making it difficult to impossible for a person to cope with daily life. There are more than 200 classified forms of mental illness (Mental Health America, 2011) and include different forms of depression and other emotional disorders, anxiety disorders, dementia, and personality disorders. It is estimated that there are more than 50 million Americans living with one form of mental illness or another.
Knowledge and understanding of mental illnesses has come a long way in the last century, before this time many were labeled as being possessed by demons. In order to “cure” them, people were often subjected to physical and emotional abuse; it was often believed that the only way to exorcise the demons was to beat them out of a person. People were locked away and isolated from the population at large, neglected and abused there was little hope or understanding for a person suffering from mental illness. Great strides were made in 1908 after a man named Clifford Beers released an autobiography titled “A Mind That Found Itself” (Mental Health America, 2010). Beers had spent time in a mental institution after his brother’s death and had witnessed firsthand the inhuman treatment of the patients, after his release he began a national movement to humanize the treatment of those with mental illnesses. From this early organization the National Association of Mental Health or NAMH was founded. The main mission of these early organizations was to improve the treatment of the mentally ill through education, understanding, improved services, and to prevent mental illness through mental health.
With the advancements in understanding toward mental illness some of the taboo and stigmas that have long been

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