Hi everyone who had posted about internationally present mental illness and bipolar disorder. Sorry I have not thanked all of you sooner. I just figured out how to find a list of threads I subscribe to. The automatic emails I'm supposed to be getting when people reply, are not happening. What you all have written is very, very sad. Too terrible to even think about. I suppose most of us know about Dorothea Lynde Dix? She dedicated her life here in the United States, to ending the same sort of conditions mentally ill people were held in, chained to the icy walls of jails in the 19th century. Here's what wikipedia has to say about her. "Dorothea Lynde Dix (April 4, 1802 – July 18, 1887) was an American activist on behalf of the indigent insane who, through a vigorous program of lobbying state legislatures and the United States Congress, created the first generation of American mental asylums."