Summary: Deinstitutionalization Of The Mentally Ill

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Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill HSM 210 Week_1 University of Phoenix America’s evolution regarding the difficulties of how society treats the mentally ill among us is not for the faint of heart. As with all medical advancements the early days are filled with horror stories we would not dream of repeating. Money played a large role in how to fuel the evolution. People with money and influence were able to either house the mentally ill in special homes. These homes experienced tremendous growth. Ackerman (2003) states, “Whitaker found that in the 50 years between 1840 and 1890, the population of hospitalized mentally ill grew from 2,561 to 74,000 patients. The number of mental hospitals, private and public, leaped from 18 in…show more content…
In many ways the act was a step in the right direction. The focus of care was going to be more localized. Community care would enable patients to not be institutionalized, but rather experience an outpatient like treatment that would enable them to more readily integrate into the community. There were and still are many successes that were achieved with this approach. Opponents point towards the cases where the community lacks the resources to assist and towards the patients that experience increased admittance into the hospital setting for treatment or worse, those that fell through the cracks. Their plight leading them to homelessness, lack of care, increased symptoms, criminal behavior, and incarceration. Both sides do agree that an entire industry was created around the passage of this act. This gave way to the birth of the Generalist Human Service Worker (Burger & Youkeles, 2004.pg.…show more content…
Grob goes on to discuss how there has been no real inventory of the lessons of history to help advance the cause for the sake of the mentally ill. Successes such as the one in Madison Wisconsin in the 1980’s are often discarded because of failures to replicate that success in larger urban areas. Furthermore the problems are easily identified yet still difficult to address as this quote from Dave Mechanic shows: "There is no quick fix for the problems that plague public mental health systems," David Mechanic conceded. "The problems are deeply entrenched and difficult to solve. Many public officials are concerned that investments in mental health will not yield significant visible benefits that justify taking political risks." (Grob, 1995) This shows why the initial steps taken in 1963 have only yielded small steps forward thirty years later. In almost every instance it seems that the only real way to make progress is to increase the amount and quality of services available to the mentally
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