Abstract
The development of ideas on deinstitutionalization of mental patients has a much longer history in the United States than is commonly acknowledged in the sociological literature. The present analysis of publications in the American Journal of Insanity from 1844 to 1900 corrects this research gap by examining the nineteenth-century deinstitutionalization discourse within American psychiatry. The role of the oldest community care program originating in Gheel, Belgium, in promoting alternative modes of treatment in the United States is emphasized, and the relevance of these findings for community mental health care and existing sociological work on deinstitutionalization is discussed.
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