ABSTRACT
Mental health policy has evolved through four cycles of reform: the era of moral treatment in asylums, the era of mental hygiene, the era of deinstitutionalization, and the current era of community mental health support. World War II altered the development of American psychiatry. The era of deinstitutionalization was introduced in tandem with the creation of community mental health centers, where patients would receive their medications and other needed therapies. The community support systems (CSS) approach encompasses a core set of principles concerning the provision of services for individuals with serious mental illnesses. Medical elites proposed a new way of treating mental illness with the well-intentioned desire to improve well-being of the mentally ill in a new setting. The current evidence-based practice paradigm promoting recovery continues to exert strong influence on the provision of public community mental health services and the evolution of mental health policy.
