An estimated 61.5 million Americans, or one in four, suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year and on average it takes a decade before they come into contact with a service professional healthcare (pending). One in 17 Americans currently lives with chronic mental disorders such as schizophrenia, major depression, or bipolar disorder (pending). Despite new discoveries and advances in science and technology, the social stigma of mental illness prevails. Why is mental illness a problem? Why should healthy people worry if their neighbor suffers from acute depression? These are the questions the average American faces. However, our society remains naive when it comes to mental health. The roots of this problem lie in the lack of information and lack of accessibility to mental health. It is important and difficult to define mental illness as mental stability varies from person to person. The definition of mental illness changes over time, in 1968 homosexuality was considered a mental disorder. That was until 1973 when the American Psychiatric Association voted to remove homosexuality from the manual (Thompson, 4). As defined by the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI), “mental illnesses are disorders that disturb thinking, feelings, moods, the ability to relate to others, and the ability to cope with the demands of life ” (Qtd. in Thompson, 4). In other words, mental illness does not become a disorder until it prevents a person from living a normal life. For example, Bill Ford, a patient with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), stayed up all night in a hospital fingering ashtrays to burn cigarette butts in fear of starting a fire. Like Bill Ford, there are 2.2 million people... middle of the paper... full professors at the University of Colorado. Unless the country develops a decent mental health care system, this problem will continue (Qtd. in “Prison Health Care, 3). More than 2 million inmates in U.S. prisons suffer from mental illness, addiction, infectious or chronic diseases such as HIV/AIDS, and diabetes (“Prison Health Care,” 1). Around a quarter suffer from severe depression and a fifth from psychosis (2). Most inmates have no health problems at the time of incarceration; once incarcerated, they acquired a mental disorder (1). In 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that prisoners have a right to free health care under the Eighth Amendment (4). However, prisons fail to provide decent quality healthcare. Some prisons do not even have licensed doctors (5). Most doctors do not want to work in a prison, so resources become sub-par.