"He opened our border to people from prisons, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, terrorists." In one breath, a former president placed a class I belong to (people with mental health conditions) in the same fear-based category as terrorists. He used a health condition that myself and 57.8 million other Americans (National Institutes of Health, 2024). live with as a political pawn.

A Dark History

As with many phenomena that are difficult to understand, mental illness has historically been greeted with fear and fear-based abuse. Perhaps the first available treatment for what we know now as mental health conditions was exorcism (Scull, 2015). In time, exorcism progressed to other means of control—chains, insulin coma, and large-scale institutionalization. These practices are a horrific aspect of our country's past that is not typically taught in history........

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