Response to the presidential address--the systematic defunding of psychiatric care: a crisis at our doorstep.

Abstract

Y ou have heard from Dr. Harding about Philadelphia’s role as the birthplace of American psychiatry. Today, however, the principle that inspired the founders of the Pennsylvania Hospital, the Friends Asylum, and the American Psychiatric Association—that a civilized society is obligated to care for those of its members who suffer from the consequences of mental illness—seems everywhere to be honored in the breach. The moral obligation of a just society to provide for the needs of the less fortunate, as we would want our needs met were we in their places, teeters on a precipice. Wishing that mental illness would not exist has led our policy makers to shape a health care system as if it did not exist. The result can only be described as an in