Almost a Revolution: Mental Health Law and the Limits of Change

Monograph: 'Police Interventions with Persons Affected by Mental Illnesses'

“…Until recent decades, large numbers of people who suffered from chronic, severe, and disabling mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were interned in public psychiatric hospitals for lengthy periods-often against their will and sometimes for life. In the US, by the middle of the 20 th century approximately 500,000 people were confined to public mental hospitals and receiving mainly custodial care (Appelbaum, 1994). Beginning in the 1960s, however, a massive process of 'deinstitutionalization' unfolded and today there are fewer than 50,000 people in these institutions (Manderscheid, Atay, & Crider, 2009).…”