Mental illness and public policy.

Abstract

The neglect and abuse of the mentally ill in America have been docu mented increasingly over the last decade.1 There is, at last, encouraging evidence of progress in ameliorating these conditions. Visible gains have brought challenges for public support of more humane policies currently being formulated. Religious groups can play a significant role in further securing the legal and human rights of the mentally ill and in effecting the changes in community attitudes necessary for their full implementation. This presupposes awareness of the conditions and needs of the mentally ill and a moral context within which to make policy judgments and decisions. In opening the congressional hearings on the Constitutional Rights of the Mentally 111 in 1969, Senator Sam Ervin spoke of "the moral right to treatment, implicit in our affluent society and under our constitutional form of government."2 The affluent society coexists with an invisible land of poverty, deprivation, illness, and despair, as Michael Harrington documented in the early 1960s.3 Though minorities in American society are becoming increasingly visible and vocal, the mentally ill remain a minority group without economic power, social status, or political representation. This minority is disenfranchised; often denied the right to medical treatment, as well as the right to refuse certain kinds of medical treatment; subjected to involuntary servitude; and frequently physically abused, with a mortality rate much higher than that of the general population.4 Though the "other America" is becoming more visible, it remains to be seen to what extent the affluent society w?l recognize the rights of the mentally ill.