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The Closure of State Psychiatric Hospitals: Communities Are Not Ready.
"The Closure of State Psychiatric Hospitals: Communities Are ...
Submitted by jlmccle9358 on December 16, 2007
Category: Psychology
Words: 921 | Pages: 4
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"The Closure of State Psychiatric Hospitals: Communities Are Not Ready"
State Psychiatric Hospitals have been around for over two hundred years; however, only in the past fifty years has the course of treatment become desirable to patients and family members of the mentally ill. While in a perfect world, the closure of these hospitals would in fact do the residences a great deal of good; with the current state of the community mental health system, the patients who are released from these inpatient institutions do not have significant care and support available to them after their release. The overall condition of the behavioral health system, has in part, failed the participants who are in need of their services.
The beginning of the deinstutionalization of state hospitals began in the 1950's, with the goal of bringing people out of the hospitals and into community based treatment centers (Flory). In theory, this plan of action is the most beneficial to mentally ill patients; however, the funding that was promised to these centers has not been distributed in full. The Department of Public Welfare put out a news release stating,
Our intent is to expand the existing community infrastructure and invest millions of dollars used to run more restrictive, costly hospital services to the community to enhance and sustain recover--supporting services as well as continue to improve Pennsylvania's mental health service delivery system (Closure 3).
Although the DPW has good intentions, "State, as well as federal, funding for mental health treatment has been steadily dropping. County--and privately--run programs have been reduced, if not cut entirely, because of the lack of money" (Mayview 1). If the Department of Public Welfare does not act in accordance with their previous promises of funding community mental health systems, then there will be no improvement, for which the mentally ill will be able to benefit from.
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