Introduction
Old times: In old times, the medical science had not advanced as much as nowadays and many of the major diseases remained incurable. There were many asylums and nursing homes for people built outside the city in places with fresh air and less noise pollution. In these homes, lived all the terminally ill patients suffering from major diseases and people who have regressive mental health. As the medical science got advanced the need for such asylums grew lesser. However, still the mentally challenged people needed some place to stay, especially the ones which are dangerous to themselves and people around them. For their own safety and proper treatment these people had to be institutionalized in these long stay psychiatric hospitals which continued to persist.
The act..
The act..: This was running smoothly until the mental health community centers act came in 1963 which changed the way things were running. The mental health community act was for the mental retardation facilities made by the government of Unites States. The start of all these changes came from 1955 when the congress passed the Mental Health Study Act. After this the joint commission of mental health and mental illness was established who studied all the facts related to the mental health community and issued a report in 1961. It was the issuance of this report which became the foundation of the mental health community centers act in 1963.
The main deed that the act performs is to entitle the mental health community centers for an assigned amount of federal funding per annum under which these centers will run. These new community centers were built in place of the previous asylums that housed all the mentally ill people. The main objective of this act, which it achieved as well, was deinstitutionalization. This deinstitutionalization has a twofold meaning. On one hand the asylums which were the homes of many mentally ill people were replaced by smaller less isolated and less crowded mental health community centers. And on the other hand under this act the people in these asylums were re-diagnosed and readmissions and admissions in general were reduced the reinforcement of feelings like helplessness, hopelessness and dependency in these mentally challenged people.
Why was it made?
Why was it made? This mental health community centers act was needed and enforced because of many reasons which needed attention. The asylums made for the mentally challenged people were always isolated, very remote and with very poor conditions. Many of the patients inside were not properly handled because of less funding and very high population. At first the base of their treatment was moral but later the whole institution and its well feeling degenerated as the number of asylums and its patients increased tremendously this increase broke the limit in the 1950s which eventually led to the point that the government was forced something about it. The act however, started from a good thought was accepted by mixed reactions. This was because many of the asylum people were released just like that which ended up in homes for homeless people and even jail.
-
