How did Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye help bring mental illness to the public eye? How did it help raise awareness?

The entire novel The Catcher in the Rye is told from the confines of a mental institution. Holden reveals this in the opening paragraphs of this work when he says he wants to tell "you about "this madman stuff that happened to me round last Christmas just before I got pretty run-down and had to come out here and take it easy." J.D. Salinger's use of second-person point-of-view should be taken in this way: the "you" refers to a psychologist or a psychoanalyst Holden is required to talk to at this place in California.

In all of his writing, Salinger often makes use of psychoanalysis, particularly in his short story "A Perfect Day for Bananafish." But he makes more use of this idea in The Catcher in the Rye than in any of his other works. Holden discusses how he had to see a psychiatrist after he smashed the windows in the garage with his bare hands when his brother died. In addition, Salinger makes it clear that Holden does get something out of his treatment. At the end of the novel, Holden states that he thinks he'll apply himself at school the next school year and then he acknowledges that he sort of miss[es] everybody I told about. Even Stradlater and Ackley, for instance." 

There are other famous characters who have used psychology in their works—Betty in Mad Men and Tony in The Sopranos are two immediate examples—but Holden is probably the most famous literary character to discuss his use of psychology.