ABSTRACT
Community exclusion was a predictable response to deinstitutionalized mental health care. The psychiatric hospital had served to separate the mentally ill from the public at large and thereby to sustain an out of sight and out of mind mentality. The quite rapid discharge of large numbers of patients, most of whom required continuing drug therapy, inevitably represented a threat to a long-standing and, for many, comfortable status quo. Territorial prerogatives were challenged as neighborhoods were selected as locations for the various types of facility needed to service the discharged client group. Public responses to these changed circumstances were not uniform however. Rejection of and opposition to clients and facilities quickly emerged among certain populations and in certain urban neighborhoods. The media were not slow to highlight resistance and effectively exaggerate both its prevalence and intensity. In contrast, the non-opponents, whether latent supporters or neutrals, remained largely invisible and unaccounted for by virtue of their passivity.
