Archive Report
Archive Report
Home-Based Care for the Mentally Ill
Construction of community mental health centers, now completed or under way in a dozen American cities, marks the start of a “treatment-at-home” program for mental illness that promises to have as profound an effect on that problem as did the movement of a century ago to unshackle “lunatics” confined in state institutions or private dwellings. The federal aid program for the local centers was authorized by Congress in 1963. President Johnson's recently submitted budget for the fiscal year 1967 asked new obligational authority of $84 million for continuation of federal assistance in the building and staffing of the centers. At least half of the states have adopted legislation providing state financial aid for community mental health service programs.
The demand ...