Community Mental Health in a Pluralistic Society

Abstract

Today the mental health movement in the United States is adrift; it is fragmented, splintered. Across the country, mental health professionals and government officials are currently struggling with complex legal, economic, and moral issues related to the delivery of mental health services. For example, the legal mandate to discharge patients into the community and the community's rejection of such programs (and of the discharged patients) are significant issues that beg for new approaches.1 We are also confronted by severe reductions in mental health budgets and a lack of support among most Americans to alter this trend. The professions inability to muster broad backing is evidence that our politics for public support need to be reevaluated. This comes at a time when rapid social and economic decline are having a serious effect on the mental health of our citizens and are straining the capacity of mental health services. Rising unemployment is creating family instability and adding new clients to the waiting lists of mental health agencies. There is some disillusionment with the early promise of community mental health programs at the very moment when greater demands from diverse groups are making these programsT ability to function even more imperative. When, in 1963, Congress passed a law providing for communitybased mental health centers, President Kennedy hailed the measure as a bold new approach to American number one health