According to the Facts & Numbers page on the National Alliance of Mental Illness website, “One in four adults – about 61.5 million Americans – suffers from mental illness in a given year. One in fo17 -- approximately 13.6 million -- are living with a serious mental illness such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder." (Facts and numbers). Throughout history, people with mental illnesses have been perceived as inferior to those without mental illnesses, and thus these people have countless difficulties and challenges to overcome compared to their counterparts with the benefits of pristine mental health. In Gerald N. Grob's The Mad Among Us, he describes the changing ways of caring for the mentally ill from the beginning of institutionalization in the early 18th century (Grob 17) to the idea that severe disorders they cannot be cured, but alleviating the symptoms "should be able to remove obstacles that hinder the natural self-healing processes." (Grob 311). The lies of people with mental illnesses are as diverse as the disorders they live with. Unimaginable obstacles await people with mental illnesses around every corner. Treatment is helpful in attempting to cure or reduce the effects of mental illness, while still causing severe hardship to those suffering from the illness. In his book A History of Psychiatry, Edward Shorter describes the first use of electroconvulsive therapy by the Roman psychiatrist Ugo Cerletti, in April 1938, in an attempt to cure or not cure the effects of mental illness, even if "[a]si patients slammed on the table risked breaking their limbs and fracturing their vertebrae." (Shorter 223). Knowledge has not always been as advanced as it is today... middle of paper... institutions where they have received drugs, treatments, therapies and care that they need to function properly, but have not been able to access them in the world external. Ailments can worsen for these people without proper supervision, but the healthcare system is selfish and thinks only of financial gain and not the needs of patients. America provides its mentally ill citizens with a healthcare system that does not treat them as a high priority but instead views them as a liability. Mental illness is a problem that affects the vast majority of the world's population with approximately 450 million people worldwide suffering from these disorders. complex diseases (mental disorders affect one in four people). Similar to other serious illnesses experienced by humans, mental illness provides people with an abundant amount of controversy and boundaries that they must overcome.