ABSTRACT
Until the deinstitutionalization movement led to a 75 per cent reduction in censuses in inpatient psychiatric facilities by the late 1970s, most of the discussion on civil commitment in the clinical and legal literature concerned involuntary hospitalization. One of the main criticisms of commitment was that patients objected mostly to hospitalization in understaffed, coercive facilities and, if released, they would voluntarily seek treatment in the community (Bleicher 1967; Chambers 1972). The confluence of effective antipsychotic medication, the rise of the community mental health movement, the application of the legal doctrine of the least restrictive alternative to commitment (Miller 1982), libertarian attacks on the parens patriae basis for commitment, and economic pressures resulted in massive discharges from state mental hospitals.
