Mental Health Awareness Month, also known as Mental Health Month, was started by Mental Health America in 1949 after the death of its founder Clifford Whittingham Beers. Clifford Beers was born to Ida and Robert Beers on March 30, 1876, in New Haven, Connecticut. He was one of five children, and unfortunately, he and all his siblings suffered from mental illnesses. 

Beers graduated from the Sheffield Scientific School at Yale in 1897. It was then he realized his mental health was failing, and he was sick. Unfortunately, Beers did not feel he could afford to rest and had become accustomed to his mental ups and downs. He continued to push through since he had gotten a job as a clerk in a tax office in New Haven right after graduation. His goal was to continue working there until he secured a position in New York, which he did eight months later. His mental health condition only worsened and took a severe change in June 1900.

Beers took his health matters into his hands and returned home to rest, but his condition did not change. He was later the first to be institutionalized at a private mental facility for depression and paranoia. He would later be hospitalized at another private hospital and later a state institution for his mental conditions. 

While hospitalized at several institutions, Beers witnessed and experienced staff maltreatment. These unfortunate events influenced him to write his book A Mind That Found Itself in 1908. In his book, he shares his story and accounts of the abuse he suffered while hospitalized. His work became highly known and favored by many. It is a bestseller and is still in print today.