I chose to write my paper on Bipolar because it always has fascinated me. It is a very serious condition that many suffer from however don’t know they have it.

Kill or Cure: History of Madness

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What is a mental illness? A mental illness is a disorder in the brain caused by a chemical imbalance that causes a person to function differently. A mental illness can be caused either by an injury or through genetics.

Being from New York I've seen many crazy and insane people on the streets. I like many others brushed them off. The documentary Kill or Cure really opened my eyes. The following are my thoughts about the documentary.

Throughout history, conditions of all sorts have been interpreted vastly differently. Upon learning of the treatments used to cure the "crazy" or "insane", I became agitated because no man or woman should have endured what many people went through in the 1800's. "Many believed, even as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that the bizarre behavior associated with mental illness could only be an act of the devil himself.

Thank God for Mental Illness

Barnes in later life when battling mental illness

Rethink Mental Illness

To remedy this, many individuals suffering from mental illness were tortured in an attempt to drive out the demon" (Psychology 101). This was clearly a misconception by many disturbed people.

Many mentally ill people were sent to asylums where the conditions were horrible. They were abused and treated in a manner that was most appalling. At one point in the movie, it was said the torturing of the inmates was an attraction and many came to watch them be tortured. This really bothered me. How could human beings be so cruel and unjust? I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy. Thank God for people like Dorothy Dix.

Dix was a teacher in an East Cambridge, England prison. She noticed the horrendous living conditions of the inmates and the inhumane treatment of them. Prisoners at the time were beaten by the guards and it was considered...