ABSTRACT
The fundamental objective of community mental health legislation in the late 1960s was the closing down of what was finally acknowledged to be an inhumane state hospital system. The expectation was that the resultant flood of discharged chronically ill patients, as well as those already living in the community, would be treated at the newly federally funded Community Mental Health Centers. This chapter captures episodes reflecting the rise and fall of the community mental health movement with all its idealism, contradictions and ultimately self-defeating mechanisms.
