Name: American psychosis
ISBN: 9780199988716

American psychosis

"In 1963, President John F. Kennedy described sweeping new programs to replace "the shabby treatment of the many millions of the mentally disabled in custodial institutions" with treatment in community mental health centers. This movement, later referred to as "deinstitutionalization," continues to impact mental health care. Fifty years after Kennedy's speech, the author provides an inside perspective on the birth of the federal mental health program. He draws on his own first-hand account of the creation and launch of the program, extensive research, one-on-one interviews with major figures involved in the legislation, and recently unearthed audiotapes of interviews with major figures involved the legislation. As such, this book provides historical material previously unavailable to the public. He also examines the political maneuverings required to pass the legislation, the Kennedys' involvement in the policy and that of other major players, the responsibility of the state versus the federal government in caring for the mentally ill, and how closing institutions has ultimately resulted not in better care, but in underfunded programs, neglect, and higher rates of community violence. In this book the author presents an account of the history and present day failings of our mental health treatment system. As he argues, it is imperative to understand how we got here in order to move forward towards providing better psychiatric care for the most vulnerable." -- From book jacket.

What Hacker News says

M_GreySep 2016

American Psychosis is an excellent book on this topic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/health/american-psychosis-...

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TossrockApr 2014

Yes, it began with the CMHA, but it was under Reagan's presidency that the people who really should not have been de-institutionalized (ie, not the older people with dementia/etc who were returned to their homes and families during the first wave of CMHA, and instead the younger people with very serious mental illness and no support system), were. This is very well documented in the book American Psychosis by Torrey if you're interested in the facts.

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homeless_sadMay 2019

We can't really reckon with our homeless problem without reckoning with the way we treat the severely mentally ill. At this point, we don't treat them. Many of the homeless, and a majority of the chronically homeless, are people who are severely mentally ill.

We used to have a state psychiatric hospital system. That system has been destroyed. Now, the severely mentally ill, when they get any treatment at all, are primarily treated in American prisons.

https://www.governing.com/topics/health-human-services/gov-m...

https://www.npr.org/2017/11/30/567477160/how-the-loss-of-u-s...

https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/deinstitutional...

https://www.amazon.com/American-Psychosis-Government-Destroy...

"Many times individuals who really do require intensive psychiatric care find themselves homeless or more and more in prison," Sisti says. "Much of our mental health care now for individuals with serious mental illness has been shifted to correctional facilities."

The percentage of people with serious mental illness in prisons rose from .7 percent in 1880 to 21 percent in 2005, according to the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights.

A consensus of other experts estimates that the total number of state beds required for acute and long-term care would be more like 50 beds per 100,000 in the population [5]. At the peak of availability in 1955, there were 340 beds per 100,000 [5]. In 2010, the number of state beds was 43,318 or 14.1 beds per 100,000 [7].

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