The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill.

Brown, Julie V.; Grob, Gerald M.; Trent, James W.

doi:10.2307/2077415

Cited by 9 publications

(11 citation statements)

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“…The work of the JCMHC reminds us that mental health is not the same thing as the absence of mental illness. In the area of mental health policy for adults, analyst David Mechanic and others have persuasively argued that services for the most needy – the seriously mentally ill – have been diluted by misguided efforts to look at mental health too broadly across the entire population (Grob, 1994; Mechanic, 1987). Members of the JCMHC who were worried about seriously emotionally disturbed children had similar concerns about those within their endeavor who wanted to look very broadly at the social environment and the population of children as a whole to prevent mental illness.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965–1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry

Hirshbein

2023

J History Behavioral Science

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The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children (JCMHC) was a sprawling, multidisciplinary project that took shape in the years immediately after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Participants included child psychiatrists, educators, psychologists, social workers, philanthropists and other laypeople and professionals interested in the plight of children. While the original inspiration for the JCMHC was to address the potential for violence from disturbed children and adolescents, its findings and recommendations were an indictment of American society itself in which poor children went hungry, minority children were oppressed and there were not sufficient resources dedicated to the mental health of the nation's population of young people. The task forces and committees of the JCMHC spent significantly more time addressing prevention and mental health rather than mental illness. Two years into the work of the JCMHC, the leadership formed a committee to specifically examine issues related to race. The final report, published in popular book form as Crisis in Child Mental Health, arrived after the unraveling of the liberal consensus that had fueled President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs. Most of the proposed solutions for government intervention were ignored by the Nixon administration. The focus on mental health and the willingness to take a critical look at the detrimental effects of racism had represented child psychiatry at that time. In the decades that followed, however, child psychiatrists turned away from issues about prevention, race and environment and instead focused on the problems of mental illness in individual children.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965–1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry

Hirshbein

2023

J History Behavioral Science

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“…For further detail on this history, the reader is referred to the following documents: Care and Treatment of the Mentally Ill in the United States: Historical Developments and Reforms (Morrissey & Goldman, 1986), The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill (Grob, 1994), and Better but Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the United States Since 1950 (Frank & Glied, 2006).…”

Section: Looking Through the Lens Of Historymentioning

confidence: 99%

Stepping into the future of behavioral health: Opportunities, challenges, and possibilities.

Manderscheid,

Ward

2024

American Journal of Orthopsychiatry

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To improve our practices of today and to overcome the problems that confront us at present, the behavioral health field must anticipate what the future is likely to bring. Such foresight is particularly important right now because of the changes and disruptions that have occurred due to the COVID-19 pandemic over the past 3 years. We begin by recounting major developments in the mental health field since the founding of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) more than 70 years ago, including some firsthand experiences of the senior author. Subsequently, we review the present situation of the behavioral health field with particular attention to the effects of COVID-19 and our current workforce crisis. Likely future scenarios are then described in two principal domains: clinical developments and community developments. Clinical developments over the next decade are likely to include much more self-directed, integrated, virtual, and personalized care. Community developments are likely to include self-empowering community interventions, better population health management, new collaborations with public health, and continued efforts to address stigma. To increase the probability of the future described, several facilitators are also outlined to create the conditions under which expected future developments can be expected to flourish. These include addressing the behavioral health workforce crisis, modernizing behavioral health clinical training, fostering opportunities for cross-sector work, fostering opportunities to engage in policy issues, creating centers of excellence for innovation in behavioral health, and fostering an integrated framework that undergirds behavioral health. The future we have described holds considerable promise for the behavioral health field and for all who suffer from mental or substance use conditions. We must begin working today to turn this potential future into tomorrow’s reality.

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“…In the 1960s, the Kennedy administration led a deinstitutionalization effort to dismantle the predominant system of long‐term institutional psychiatric care—“care” is a grossly overgenerous germ, as the horrific conditions of many psychiatric institutions, or “asylums,” were a key driver of the deinstitutionalization movement 18 . Although this effort shuttered most inpatient psychiatric institutions, it failed to realize the Kennedy administration's vision of replacing institutions with comprehensive community‐based care, and a lack of adequate community services has contributed to high rates of homelessness and criminal legal system involvement among people with mental illness 18,26,27 . In recent years, the certified community behavioral clinic model, supported through a federal Department of Health and Human Services demonstration program, has supported growth of community‐based mental health crisis response services, a long‐standing gap in the United States post‐deinstitutionalization mental health system 28,29 .…”

Section: Past Successesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…18 Although this effort shuttered most inpatient psychiatric institutions, it failed to realize the Kennedy administration's vision of replacing institutions with comprehensive community-based care, and a lack of adequate community services has contributed to high rates of homelessness and criminal legal system involvement among people with mental illness. 18,26,27 In recent years, the certified community behavioral clinic model, supported through a federal Department of Health and Human Services demonstration program, has supported growth of community-based mental health crisis response services, a longstanding gap in the United States post-deinstitutionalization mental health system. 28,29 In July 2022, the United States introduced a threedigit dialing code (988) that everyone in the United States can call, text, or chat to reach the National Suicide Prevention lifeline, which will connect people to a network of over 180 crisis centers across the United States.…”

Section: Past Successesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Future of Public Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities

McGinty

2023

Milbank Quarterly

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Social policies such as policies advancing universal childcare to expand Medicaid coverage of home‐ and community‐based care for seniors and people with disabilities and for universal preschool are the types of policies needed to address social determinants of poor mental health. Population‐based global budgeting approaches like accountable care and total cost of care models have the potential to improve population mental health by incentivizing health systems to control costs while simultaneously improving outcomes for the populations they serve. Policies expanding reimbursement for services delivered by peer support specialists are needed. People with lived experience of mental illness are uniquely well suited to helping their peers navigate treatment and other support services.

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The Mad Among Us: A History of the Care of America's Mentally Ill.

Cited by 9 publications

References 0 publications

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965–1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry

The Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children, 1965–1970: Emotional disturbance, race and paths not taken in child psychiatry

Stepping into the future of behavioral health: Opportunities, challenges, and possibilities.

The Future of Public Mental Health: Challenges and Opportunities

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