ABSTRACT
This part introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters. The part provides an excellent synthesis of the last two centuries of mental health care, showing the continuity of problems. It shows how the same issues constantly arose. Both the nineteenth-century project and the current community mental health and deinstitutionalization programs were flawed, since ‘each movement was launched with little or nor appreciation of the practical limits to which the core ideas could be pushed.’ Both nineteenth- and twentieth-century mental health reforms were ‘initially stimulated by therapeutic innovation but were ultimately accelerated by political-economic considerations.’ The part also shows how professionalist and economic concerns defeated many fine ideas. Thus, despite many changes within the mental health system, the overall framework remained very much the same. The part presents hows how emerging capitalist market relations required a more precise identification of able-bodied and non-able-bodied deviants.
