Mental Health Policy and Mental Hospitalization

Abstract

Mental health policy is a rich field for study, and psychologists have much to offer it. Mental hospitaliza tion is the central, albeit uninten tional, feature of mental health pol icy. In this article, I present some recent analyses of national data bases regarding mental hospitaliza tion and relate them to issues in mental health policy. The most pervasive theme in U.S. mental health policy is a strong ten dency not to see the whole array of problems at once.1 Discussions of policy issues become very tilted as a function of what one emphasizes and what one leaves out. For the ed ucated public, mental health policy suggests state mental hospitals and private psychiatric hospitals, on the one hand, and issues of homeless ness and nursing homes, on the other. For psychologists, discussions of mental health policy tend to re flect their concern with the effective