An image of an inmate receiving medication taken from The New Asylums.

According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, serious mental illness is categorized as a mental, behavioral, or emotional disorder that currently causes the patient serious functional impairment and interferes with his or her life. Serious mental illness is most prevalent among a young, white, female population. In 2008, approximately 13.4 percent of United States adults received treatment for a mental health issue. The National Institute of Mental Health estimated that in 2002, that serious mental illness – which affects about 6 percent of the adult population – costs more than $300 billion per year.

Frontline hosts an excerpt from “Out of Shadows: Confronting America’s Mental Illness Crisis”. This selection delineates the issue of deinstitutionalization in the United States; deinstitutionalization refers to “policy of moving severely mentally ill people out of large state institutions and then closing part or all of those institutions”. In the 1950’s, antipsychotic medications were developed and many health care professionals at the time thought that this would be a valid substitute for the mental institution. From then on, most state and federal mental health care facilities have closed. With consideration for the ratio of the national population in 1955 compared with today, the difference between the numbers of patients in mental hospitals is approximately 885,010 then to 71,619 now – a 92 percent decrease.

As a result of deinstitutionalization, it is estimated that 2.2 million severely mentally ill people do not receive any psychiatric treatment.

Because many severely mentally ill individuals are not receiving the care they need, they are likely to create public disturbances. Many mentally ill individuals end up on the streets and jails and prisons have become the defacto replacement for mental hospitals.