Deinstitutionalisation
The movement of patients out of large psychiatric hospitals and back into the community. In the United States, in-patients in state and county mental hospitals fell from about 559,000 in 1955 to about 110,000 in 1985.
In-patients in American state and county mental hospitals peaked at 558,922 in 1955, then fell to 193,436 in 1975 and 109,939 in 1985. In 1963 President Kennedy proposed to Congress a national programme for treating mental illness in the community, and the Community Mental Health Centers Act was passed the same year[1].
The steepest fall came between 1965 and 1975, when public health insurance that paid for nursing homes and income support for disabled people were spreading. One study found no statistical link with the spread of the new drugs. By 1980 just over 700 community mental health centres had been funded, about half of the 1,500 thought necessary[1].
Related terms
- ChlorpromazineA drug that eases the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia. Synthesised in France in 1951 and tried as an aid to anaesthesia, it entered psychiatry in 1952.
- Mental Hygiene ActA Japanese law of 1950 that prohibited home confinement and required patients to be cared for in hospitals and other designated facilities. Revised in 1987, it became the Mental Health Act.