Before the 1960s, mentally ill people were usually sent to state or charitable institutions for long term treatment and monitoring. President Kennedy sought to improve the situation with 1963s Community Mental Health Act. The purpose of the CMHA was to build local mental health centers to provide for community-based care, as an alternative to institutionalization. At the centers, patients could be treated while working and living at home. As with so many pieces of legislation, the law of unintended consequences only made things worse. Institutions began to close, releasing their mentally ill patients into the community in compliance with the CMHA. But only half of the proposed local mental health centers were ever built, none were fully funded, and the act didn’t provide money to operate them long-term. A new American plague was created. Homelessness. In 1955 for every 100,000 US citizens there was 340 psychiatric hospital beds. By 2005 that number had diminished to 17 per 100,000. Many of those who were no longer being treated ended up without a home, too ill to support themselves. By the late 1980s studies found that up to half of all homeless people had severe psychiatric disorders. The governments attempt to help the mentally ill instead lead to a chronic homelessness problem that we still suffer from to this day. SOURCES: seattletimes/html/nationworld/2022091710_mentalhealthxml.htm Rubin, Lillian B. Sand Castles and Snake Pits: Homelessness, Public Policy, and the Law of Unintended Consequences. c2.ramsey.schoolwires.net/cms/lib3/NJ01000326/Centricity/Domain/183/sandcastles%20and%20snake%20pits%20reading.doc #homelessness #cmha #kennedy #mentalillness #homeless
Posted on: Thu, 13 Nov 2014 15:40:53 +0000
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