The Pros And Cons Of Deinstitutionalization

Deinstitutionalization plays a key role in mental health care around the nation and is a part of the movement to better the health care system.. Deinstitutionalization is the process of replacing asylums with national networks of community-based mental health centers to better the lives of the ones affected. The first attempt at deinstitutionalization was in 1854 when Dorothea Dix requested to put 10 million aside for mental health facilities with the help of the Congress. President Franklin Pierce told Dix that it fixing the health system care was an overreach of their job and vetoed the final bill. Today deinstitutionalization brings both positives and negatives to communities affected by it. In 1963, President John F. Kennedy emphasized the need for a reform to Congress with a special message. President Kennedy was
Deinstitutionalization caused homelessness to those with mental disorders because the people have nowhere to go after treatment. .When asylums were still in place, people most likely stayed for the rest of their lives. This meant they never had to look for a place to live. Moreover, with the help of deinstitutionalization, people could go home from mental hospitals earlier. Thus, once they got out of the mental hospital, they had nowhere to go and no one to go to. Deinstitutionalization also caused more mass shootings happen. Forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy, Ph.D., found that most mass murderers suffer from mental illnesses. He stated that those people were “untreated or poorly treated” in mental health care facilities.In fact, there has been an average of 20 mass murders a year since 1976. Another challenging factor was funding for deinstitutionalization. There wasn't enough federal funding for the mental health centers. Without funding it meant that there weren't enough centers to serve all those with mental health needs who could end up in