ABSTRACT
Originally published in 1985, at a time when the previous 2 decades had witnessed dramatic changes in the US mental health system. These included the decline of the state mental hospital, the birth of the community mental health center and the expansion of psychiatric services in general hospitals. The inevitable results of the changes were the creation of a huge nursing home population of the chronically mentally ill, and the multiplication of urban ‘street people’. Mental health care is uncoordinated and underfunded. The historical roots of these problems are examined in this book which is designed both as a professional reference volume and as a text for students in the sociology of mental health and illness. The contributors are drawn from diverse fields, including sociology, psychiatry, psychology, epidemiology and social history.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|88 pages
Historical and conceptual concerns
part II|114 pages
The changing mental health system
chapter Chapter 4|22 pages
The de facto US mental health services system: A public health perspective *
chapter Chapter 7|21 pages
Community control or control of the community?
chapter Chapter 8|26 pages
The mental patients' rights movement, and mental health institutional change *
part III|72 pages
Providers and treatments
chapter Chapter 10|18 pages
Prediction in psychiatry: an example of misplaced confidence in experts * †
part IV|123 pages
Alternatives to traditional mental health services