tion programs
History of Community Mental Health
A historical analysis of America's community mental health systems has been provided by Grob (1991) who states that several factors gave rise to the development of these systems. These factors are: humanitarian reform, governmental involvement, the development of psychotropic drugs, deinstitutionalization, and legislation. Each of these factors is briefly discussed below.
Humanitarian reform refers to the shift in the perspective of the mentally ill that began around 1984; prior to this time, the only "treatment" given to the mentally ill was consignment to jail, an asylum, or a country home. However, a movement for the more humane treatment of the mentally ill spawned by such people as Benjamin Rush and Dorothea Dix, led to both more humane and more effective help for these people.
Indeed, by 1900, the movement for humanitarian reform in the care of the mentally ill had led to the establishment of 32 mental hospitals. Grob (1991) reports that the humane perspective was augmented by the work of Clifford Beers' who established a society for mental hygiene, a society whose purpose was to combat ignorance about the cause and the nature of mental illness.
The call for humane treatment for the mentally ill led to governmental involvement in the financing of mental health services beginning in 1935 with the passage of the Social Security Act. This shift in responsibility was based on the notion that if local communities could not care for their mentally ill, then the federal government was morally bound to do so.
The government's role was expanded in 1946 when Congress enacted the National Mental Health Act making grants available to states to apply for a community health approach to treatment of the mentally ill. In fact, two important types of treatment facilities came into existence in the 1940s along with the expansion of the role of government. These were ...