deinstitutionalization

An event that happened in the 1960s allowing over 850,000 mental patients to be free. It was created as an experiment to forbid the oppression of the civil rights of mental patients being helf in institutitons against their will. As a result, these patients are not monitored on their medication, and are free to roam the country as they wish. Many are living in the street, in prisons, or living where ever. The quality of life is a questionable matter in this. Is getting civil rights insured better than living a lower qualtiy of life?

Mental health care was revolutionised in the decades following the 1950s by the introduction of effective antipsychotic medications. Mental asylums were diminished or closed, and their residents reintegrated into society. (In NSW, Australia this process was facilitated by the Richmond Report of 1983.)

st pauly's girl has noted problems associated with this transition, some of which have been managed through the use of halfway houses in which the seriously mentally ill may live together, under the supervision of a part- or full-time mental health worker.

Bibliography

• http://www.cs.nsw.gov.au/MHealth/documents/nsw_chronology.htm