The consequences of Deinstitutionalization
Deinstitutionalization can be defined in so many ways. The common definition of deinstitutionalization “in sociology, a movement that advocates the transfer of mentally disables people from public or private institutions such as psychiatric hospital back to their families or into community base homes.” (Jacques-stiker, 2016). While concentrated on the mentally ill, deinstitutionalization may also be describe similar transfers involving prisoners, the developmentally disables or other individual previously confirmed to institutions in the community. For several decades the issue of deinstitutionalization has become a controversial issue for most American. For one thing, society has limited tolerance
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For this paper, I will be looking at the negative and positive consequences of deinstitutionalization and also point out some of the initiative that has been implemented towards this movement.
Deinstitutionalization began in the 1955 as a way for the government to improve treatment for the mentally ill patients. Patients in states hospital at time reached a staggering number of, 559,000 people out of the total national population of 160 million (E.Fuller Torsy, 1997). For decades, state run psychiatric hospitals were traditionally the primary component in the treatment of people with severe and persistent mental health illness. For years people with mental illness were kept out of the community and in state owned psychiatric hospital. However; later in process of this movement, the introduction of an
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It promotes independence and better quality of life outside of institution, moreover; it empowers individuals to make responsible choices and action with the assistance of a social worker through psychiatric rehabilitation. Deinstitutionalization gave people that are mentally ill the right and respect they deserved. Once they are intergraded within the society, individual can participate in various mainstream functions that help improve their cognitive function. Also in some settings, deinstitutionalization people are allowed to work and are compensated for their work. Furthermore, deinstitutionalization patients are free to seek treatment in others ways. They are free to seek their treatment have other options to choose
Pollack, Harold. "What Happened to U.S. Mental Health Care after Deinstitutionalization." Washingtonpost.com. N.p., 12 June 2013. Web. 13 Nov. 2013.
As a result of the lack of regulation in state mental institutions, most patients were not just abused and harassed, but also did not experience the treatment they came to these places for. While the maltreatment of patients did end with the downsizing and closing of these institutions in the 1970’s, the mental health care system in America merely shifted from patients being locked up in mental institutions to patients being locked up in actual prisons. The funds that were supposed to be saved from closing these mental institutions was never really pumped back into treating the mentally ill community. As a result, many mentally ill people were rushed out of mental institutions and exposed back into the real world with no help where they ended up either homeless, dead, or in trouble with the law. Judges even today are still forced to sentence those in the latter category to prison since there are few better options for mentally ill individuals to receive the treatment they need. The fact that America, even today, has not found a proper answer to treat the mentally ill really speaks about the flaws in our
In the book “The Mad Among Us-A History of the Care of American’s Mentally Ill,” the author Gerald Grob, tells a very detailed accounting of how our mental health system in the United States has struggled to understand and treat the mentally ill population. It covers the many different approaches that leaders in the field of mental health at the time used but reading it was like trying to read a food label. It is regurgitated in a manner that while all of the facts are there, it lacks any sense humanity. While this may be more of a comment on the author or the style of the author, it also is telling of the method in which much of the policy and practice has come to be. It is hard to put together without some sense of a story to support the action.
Deinstitutionalization started off as something that may have seemed honorable and sensible to those in our society back in the 1900’s as it seems like it was started in the sole interest of those who were mentally ill. Some of the most common reasons as to why deinstitutionalization was started are because the government wanted to put to stop the unethical treatment of the mentally ill who were often packed int...
Parker, Laura. "The Right to Be Mentally Ill: Families Lobby to Force Care." USA TODAY. Feb. 12 2001: 1A+. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 11 Feb. 2014.
Mental illness has been around as long as people have been. However, the movement really started in the 19th century during industrialization. The Western countries saw an immense increase in the number and size of insane asylums, during what was known as “the great confinement” or the “asylum era” (Torrey, Stieber, Ezekiel, Wolfe, Sharfstein, Noble, Flynn Criminalizing the Seriously Mentally Ill). Laws were starting to be made to pressure authorities to face the people who were deemed insane by family members and hospital administrators. Because of the overpopulation in the institutions, treatment became more impersonal and had a complex mix of mental and social-economic problems. During this time the term “psychiatry” was identified as the medical specialty for the people who had the job as asylum superintendents. These superintendents assumed managerial roles in asylums for people who were considered “alienated” from society; people with less serious conditions wer...
Social justice has influence change in policies for the mentally ill. Opening the doors for political reform. Throughout history, the treatment of the mentally ill has taken many shapes. Influence by the time periods core values and ideas of social justice. Before the colonization, society did not see the mentally ill as human beings. This ideology was Influence by religion that considered them to be evil or demons. Especially during the Black Death when people were only looking for escape goats. Day, & Schiele, (2013) This would only make things worse for mentally disabled. Rendering them defenseless and at the will of society. Their disabling conditions would prevent them from self-advocacy. They would have to depend on family members to advocate; and demand social justice for them. The overwhelming societal norms influence by religion and fueled by fear punishment appeared to be the only solution.
I decided to focus my plunge on adults with mental and physical disabilities, because I had no prior experience with this group. Coming from an able-bodied family where no one has significant handicaps, I was generally shielded from people with disabilities. Over the years, I grew to associate dangerous stigmas with these people, even though they have no control over their circumstance. The
Until the middle of the last century, public mental health in the United States had been the responsibility, for the most part, of individual states, who chose to deal with their most profoundly mentally-ill by housing them safely and with almost total asylum in large state mental hospitals. Free of the stresses we all face in our lives, the mentally-ill faced much better prospects for peaceful lives and even recovery than they would in their conditions in ordinary society. In the hospitals, doctors were always accessible for help, patients were assured food and care, and they could be monitored to insure they never became a danger to themselves or others. Our nation’s state hospital system was a stable, efficient way to help improve the lives of our mentally disabled.
“During the 1970’s and 1980’s mental hospitals had a fiscal crisis and thousands of people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses who had been institutionalized for years had been released by the courts. These individuals no longer met the standard for forcible incarceration because they were not dangerous or in need of supervisory treatment any longer. As a result a large amount of people with mental illnesses or were socially fragile were let go from hospitals lacking psychiatric and social work follow up, and many stopped taking their medications” (Shapiro & Wizner, 2011, p.2-3). In 2002, New York City along with New York’s mental health and parole supervision agencies based a nonprofit organization called Project Renewal. This program assisted ex-offenders that had ment...
Group Homes for Adults with Disabilities Should Be Given a Chance In “Child, Home, Neighborhood, Community, Conscience,” Noam Bramson argues that a middle-class neighborhood in New York City should not oppose the placement of a group home for the mentally disabled in their neighborhood, claiming that their objections were shallow and somewhat paranoid. Bramson argues that group homes provide more benefits to the mentally disabled than hospitals due the homes allowing them to integrate into society without them losing the special care they need. The concern that the four autistic men could present a threat of sexually predatory behavior is invalid because People with mental disabilities would be better off in group homes because
Those with mental illness would live in the community with an array of services and be able to be free from the constraints of confinement. In the early 1960’s the United States began an initiative to reduce and close publicly-operated mental hospitals. This became known as deinstitutionalization. The goal of deinstitutionalization was to allow people suffering from mental illness to live more independently in the community with treatments provided through community health programs. Unfortunately, the federal government did not provide sufficient ongoing funding for the programs to meet the growing demand. States reduced their budgets for mental hospitals but failed to increase funding for on-going community-based mental health programs. As a result of deinstitutionalization hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people were released into the community without the proper resources they needed for their treatment. (Harcourt,
Continuing budget cuts on mental health care create negative and detrimental impacts on society due to increased improper care for mentally ill, public violence, and overcrowding in jails and emergency rooms. Origins, of mental health as people know it today, began in 1908. The movement initiated was known as “mental hygiene”, which was defined as referring to all things preserving mental health, including maintaining harmonious relation with others, and to participate in constructive changes in one’s social and physical environment (Bertolote 1). As a result of the current spending cuts approaching mental health care, proper treatment has declined drastically. The expanse of improper care to mentally ill peoples has elevated harmful threats of heightened public violence to society.
One of the ways to achieve this was the fact that the body acts as a liaison between two departments of government which includes Health and Environment and Local Authorities to ensure that the mentally ill personalities were resettled to proper residences immediately they were discharged from hospitals (Lamb, 1984). It should be noted that in the past, the public has been established to lack information regarding the role played by the disabled in the society. Negative attitudes, behavior, and beliefs about the mentally ill, discrimination and prejudice toward individuals with mental illness were some of the injustices that were being exercised against the mentally ill. This also continued to be one of the primary barriers to achieving decent housing for those affected by mental illnesses in the society. More so, the unwillingness of the general public to take care of the mentally ill remained a significant barrier that the government and other stakeholders must have worked to solve if the interests of the disabled were to be protected.
Since the beginning of deinstitutionalization in the mid twentieth century, there has been a significant need for community mental health care, which was recognized after long term institutional care was considered ineffective. One concept that arose during the community mental health movement was case management. An important goal of the community mental health movement was to create full time mental health centers throughout the United States, and case management was to provide outpatient care to those who suffered from severe mental illness. Case management is still widely recognized today, and continues to be effective in providing care to clients who suffer from mental illness. Case management is a fundamental solution to the advocacy, recruitment, treatment, and care of both the disadvantaged and mentally disabled individuals.