ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how social policy examined as a package of claims in which images of types of conditions and persons serve as moral justifications for particular types of public responses. It also explores the rhetorical relationships between construetions of types of people and the meaning of the cultural values of freedom and rights. The chapter focuses on "mental illness" for the very practical reason that the controversy in New York City was resolved by enacting policies of involuntary hospitalization in mental institutions, and this can be justified only for a type of person constructed as "mentally ill". It examines a long history of how "mental illness" became medicalized. The short history of "mental illness" is organized around the theme of how claims can be read as offering justifications for a policy called "community mental health". The chapter provides a broad view to place the community mental health movement into a larger perspective.
