What Is a Community Mental Health Center

Introduction

Community mental health centers help support and treat people who are suffering from any kind of mental illness or mental disorder. This saves the people who are suffering from mental disorder from becoming even more depressed because they are not sent to any mental asylum. The community mental health centers provide them with medications and other forms of treatments. Their services also include supported housing with the facility of practical supervision, medical services based on local primary care or centers and various self-help groups for mental health. Community mental health center has helped a lot of people and served them to a great extent from getting deprived of their basic human rights.

History

The history of community mental health centers began with the effort for containing those people who were considered lunatics or insane. The development of these kinds of health center became very common when these people were considered to be medically ill and were shifted to psychiatric institutions. These things lead to the creation of many community mental health centers in the country of America and many other countries of the world. Many laws have been made for benefiting the millions of people suffering from mental illnesses in United States.

Features

There are several factors behind the emergence of community health centers. The Mental Health Act was introduced in the year of 2001 and the Department of Health and Human Sciences provided the guideline for putting the law into action. In the year 2002, the Children's Health Act after was mandated by the Congress after an in-depth study of mental disorders in children. This report was made by The National Council for the Community Behavioral Healthcare along with help from several other partners. George Bush was the president of America at that time and he formed the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health, which was handed the responsibility of conducting a comprehensive study of the country Mental Health Service Delivery System and included both public and private sector providers. The commission was aimed at reviewing the effectiveness and the quality of the public and private providers in the field of mental health. It was also aimed at identifying the several innovative services, technologies and treatments. A report was issued and recommendations were made by the commission based on their findings. Community mental health centers found their own place on the list of recommendations.

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