Posted by Abby on January 8, 2000, at 16:08:48
In reply to Re: Thanks Noa, I guess my post was a mistake. Jamie, posted by Noa on January 8, 2000, at 15:23:37
I don't know that much about it, but my understanding was that deinstitutionalization was
the result of a combination of forces starting in the sixties.
1.) Aggressive action on the part of civil liberties lawyers (yes Jamie)
2.)an untested belief in the power of antipsychotic drugs.3.) My understanding was that even in the Kennedy
era the community mental health system was supposed eventually
to become self-funding and that many of the counselors preferred to
provide marriage therapy rather than seek out the schizophrenics.
4.) Medicare and Medicaid made healthcare a federal
program. State governments, which were responsible
for the inpatient mental hospitals wanted to shift
their costs to the Feds by getting their indigent
patients on Medicaid, and to do that, the patients
had to be living in the community. The resources
were never there.I really don't want to be partisan about this. I
read an article in National Review once by an
expert in the field which called the result "an
equal opportunity disaster" Democrats and
Republicans have both been to blame.Noa-- you have much more experience with Harvard
Community Health. I was on it in the late 70s
and early eighties when we lived on Beacon Hill
(just a small house on Pinckney St), but I was
only (4-7) at the time and generally healthy.Abby
poster:Abby
thread:18345
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000101/msgs/18407.html