How Does Mental Illness Affect Our Society

It is absolutely certain that everyone in the world has been somehow affected by mental illness. You don’t need to have a mental illness to feel an impact from it, for it is everywhere. You interact with people every day that have mental illnesses that you may never even know have them. You may have a parent, sibling, co-worker, or a friend that is suffering from a mental illness or multiple mental illnesses. So, as much as we can or maybe cannot recognize that mental illness is all around us, how much do we really recognize how it affects us as a society? In our current society, there are huge demands for living a functioning everyday life. We live in a world where there is a system of how things should be done to get that function down.
Most times these individuals are getting arrested for misdemeanor crimes and police will use charges of disorderly conduct against individuals to arrest them because they have no other charges available to use. (source) Another common cause of arrest is substance abuse related issues because there are close and frequent ties of people with mental illnesses and abusing substances. (source) There are types of arrests towards people like “mercy bookings” that happen when police are trying to protect people with the most severe illnesses, being especially true for victimized women. There are also things like police getting rid of “undesirables” being homeless people and vagrants on the streets. There is pressure from people in communities on the police to “clean the streets.” (NationalHomeless.org, 2014) In a long list of issues concerning criminalization, suicide is one of the most common. It is more common for inmates suffering from depression or schizophrenia to commit suicide while incarcerated. There are many unsuccessful suicides in jails for people suffering from these untreated mental illnesses, with the ratio being 20 to 1. (MentalIllnessPolicy.org, 2011) (add another