ABSTRACT
It cannot be our purpose here to enter upon the manifold and enormous complexities of the severe mental disorders. It is this peculiar combination of the symptomatic and the social that has made the psychoses a major management problem for organized society as well as a set of intolerable problems for the afflicted individual. The deinstitutionalization movement—a movement intended to counteract the effects of dehumanization in mental health care—can best fulfill its promise if certain conditions are met. A few years ago, the chronic psychotic was a long-term resident of a back ward of a custodial mental hospital. Chronicity is now defined by multiple readmissions and severe dependency rather than simply by long-term hospital stay. In rehabilitation practice, the serving agency will typically see people who are both disabled and handicapped, simply because people with nonhandicapping disabilities will not accept referral. The more chronic the disorder, the more likely it is to receive the label of schizophrenia.
