ABSTRACT
Statistics Canada show that one in every five Canadians suffer from mental illness. Whether you suffer from a mental illness yourself, or know someone that does, you won’t have to look far to find someone suffering from mental health issues in Canada today. Historically, mental health was not an actively talked about issue in society. Those diagnosed with a mental disability were shipped away to hospitals that would prick and praw at them to find out what made them so different than the rest of society. No one understood the concept of mental illness and what mental health really was during this time period. Mental health had no concept, and neither did what they called patients with mental health issues. From mentally retarded to mentally disabled to, the most recently used term, mentally ill: what we have thought of as mentally health has changed drastically throughout history. Yet although these illnesses have been talked about and known about for centuries, there was only a real increase in institutions after the second World War due to the fact that the men in combat and women in the medical tents returned and had severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Little was known about the mental effects from post-war, therefore when people returned home and starting asking different they began to put them in mental institutions to help them but more importantly try and understand why they were seeing and hearing things. People were placed in institutions rapidly, many not actually needing the support but those that did need the help weren’t getting the full attention due to overpopulation in the institutions. Yet there was more to just the history of mental illness and the institutionalizations available during this time. It is time to focus on the issues and benefits of deinstitutionalization in Canada during 1970 to 1990 and their effects on health and the differences in gender.