ABSTRACT
Long ongoing has been a discussion between providers, researchers, consumer rights advocates, and legislators regarding the comparison of hospital-based versus community-based behavioral health treatment. Community-based mental health, as an initial concept, referred to services offered in non-hospital and non-institutional settings. While the term encompasses any non-hospital or non-institution setting, the current use of home- and community-based behavioral health treatment refers primarily to services provided in the least restrictive service environments—such as the consumer’s domicile, school, and natural community. When looking at this issue, behavioral health care providers, consumers, and consumers’ families tend to favor one treatment setting over the other. It is important to assert that each location of service provision and intensity of services occupies a needed position on the spectrum of behavioral health care provision. If hospital stays are accessed on an as-needed basis, only then can other community treatment programs be utilized (when consumers are not hospitalized) to give those consumers with more severe behavioral health issues the opportunity to receive therapeutic services, skill building, and resource coordination in a more familiar community environment.
