A Beautiful Mistreated MindThis essay concerns an often overlooked aspect of the lives of people with mental health issues: their treatment. It looks into the reasons why these people were neglected or abused in the past and how to fix it

Essay by gracejeschkeHigh School, 11th gradeB, December 2010

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A Beautiful, Mistreated Mind

Many people consider the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" one of the greatest movies ever made. This is not without reason, as the shocking subject matter and brilliant acting truly personify the horror of the situation as a group of supposedly mentally ill people fight to keep what is left of their sanity under the twisted care of the fiendish Nurse Ratchet. As they hear the native American drums beet while the credits role, many people breathe a sigh of relief and murmur "Thank God that does not happen anymore." However, this movie does not incorporate some of the true horror that the mentally disabled and ill still go through to this day. Those with mental issues, a very misunderstood facet of humanity, are much mistreated, unfortunately, most of all by the people enlisted to care for them. But this problem would be easily fixed if those in power would be even a little more vigilant towards the situation these people are in.

Many people remember with horror the asylums of the past. In the times of ancient Greece, "Whenever there was a plague, 'the mentally ill' were forced to live on the outskirts of town…and were stoned to death as part of the ritual purification of the city…called 'pharmakos' [which] is the root source of our modern day word, pharmaceutical" (Mentalhealthstigma). This suggests just how ignorant and loathing society is to the mentally unwell if the name one of the most respected medical studies, pharmacy work, is derived from the slaughter. Another example is that though it was created in 1247, the horror of the Bedlam asylum still stays in our minds and speech today (Alvaro). Back then, the belief was that the insane and retarded were possessed by demons or the...