From Asylum to Prison

From Asylum to Prison PDF Author: Anne E. Parsons
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469640643
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
To many, asylums are a relic of a bygone era. State governments took steps between 1950 and 1990 to minimize the involuntary confinement of people in psychiatric hospitals, and many mental health facilities closed down. Yet, as Anne Parsons reveals, the asylum did not die during deinstitutionalization. Instead, it returned in the modern prison industrial complex as the government shifted to a more punitive, institutional approach to social deviance. Focusing on Pennsylvania, the state that ran one of the largest mental health systems in the country, Parsons tracks how the lack of community-based services, a fear-based politics around mental illness, and the economics of institutions meant that closing mental hospitals fed a cycle of incarceration that became an epidemic. This groundbreaking book recasts the political narrative of the late twentieth century, as Parsons charts how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making. In doing so, she offers critical insight into how the prison took the place of the asylum in crucial ways, shaping the rise of the prison industrial complex.

From Asylum to Prison

From Asylum to Prison PDF Author: Anne E. Parsons
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469640643
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
To many, asylums are a relic of a bygone era. State governments took steps between 1950 and 1990 to minimize the involuntary confinement of people in psychiatric hospitals, and many mental health facilities closed down. Yet, as Anne Parsons reveals, the asylum did not die during deinstitutionalization. Instead, it returned in the modern prison industrial complex as the government shifted to a more punitive, institutional approach to social deviance. Focusing on Pennsylvania, the state that ran one of the largest mental health systems in the country, Parsons tracks how the lack of community-based services, a fear-based politics around mental illness, and the economics of institutions meant that closing mental hospitals fed a cycle of incarceration that became an epidemic. This groundbreaking book recasts the political narrative of the late twentieth century, as Parsons charts how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making. In doing so, she offers critical insight into how the prison took the place of the asylum in crucial ways, shaping the rise of the prison industrial complex.

Closing the Asylums

Closing the Asylums PDF Author: George Paulson, M.D.
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 078649266X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
One of the most significant medical and social initiatives of the twentieth century was the demolition of the traditional state hospitals that housed most of the mentally ill, and the placement of the patients out into the community. The causes of this deinstitutionalization included both idealism and legal pressures, newly effective medications, the establishment of nursing and group homes, the woeful inadequacy of the aging giant hospitals, and an attitudinal change that emphasized environmental and social factors, not organic ones, as primarily responsible for mental illness. Though closing the asylums promised more freedom for many, encouraged community acceptance and enhanced outpatient opportunities, there were unintended consequences: increased homelessness, significant prison incarcerations of the mentally ill, inadequate community support or governmental funding. This book is written from the point of view of an academic neurologist who has served 60 years as an employee or consultant in typical state mental institutions in North Carolina and Ohio.

Out Of Bedlam

Out Of Bedlam PDF Author: Ann B. Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
The author is a social worker who writes with experience, authority, and compassion about what really happened when thousands of mental patients were discharged from state hospitals--and what to do about it. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

50 Years after Deinstitutionalization

50 Years after Deinstitutionalization PDF Author: Brea L. Perry
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
ISBN: 1785604023
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
This volume will examine deinstitutionalization’s legacies approximately 50 years after reintegration began. It will highlight pressing issues around mental health treatment, social and health policy, and the lived experiences of those coping with mental illness that were or continue to be significantly influenced by deinstitutionalization reforms.

Decarcerating Disability

Decarcerating Disability PDF Author: Liat Ben-Moshe
Publisher: U of Minnesota Press
ISBN: 1452963509
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
This vital addition to carceral, prison, and disability studies draws important new links between deinstitutionalization and decarceration Prison abolition and decarceration are increasingly debated, but it is often without taking into account the largest exodus of people from carceral facilities in the twentieth century: the closure of disability institutions and psychiatric hospitals. Decarcerating Disability provides a much-needed corrective, combining a genealogy of deinstitutionalization with critiques of the current prison system. Liat Ben-Moshe provides groundbreaking case studies that show how abolition is not an unattainable goal but rather a reality, and how it plays out in different arenas of incarceration—antipsychiatry, the field of intellectual disabilities, and the fight against the prison-industrial complex. Ben-Moshe discusses a range of topics, including why deinstitutionalization is often wrongly blamed for the rise in incarceration; who resists decarceration and deinstitutionalization, and the coalitions opposing such resistance; and how understanding deinstitutionalization as a form of residential integration makes visible intersections with racial desegregation. By connecting deinstitutionalization with prison abolition, Decarcerating Disability also illuminates some of the limitations of disability rights and inclusion discourses, as well as tactics such as litigation, in securing freedom. Decarcerating Disability’s rich analysis of lived experience, history, and culture helps to chart a way out of a failing system of incarceration.

Deinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual Disabilities

Deinstitutionalization and People with Intellectual Disabilities PDF Author: Kelley Johnson
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
ISBN: 9781846421341
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
This international collection of personal and professional perspectives takes a fresh look at deinstitutionalization. It addresses the key steps towards deinstitutionalization as they have been experienced by people with intellectual disabilities: living inside total institutions, moving out, living in the community and moving on to new forms of both institutionalization and community life. Many of the chapters are contributions from people with intellectual disabilities. They are based on a life history approach and give a unique personal account of the lived experiences of institutional life and deinstitutionalization by the people who were subject to it. The life story of Tom Allen (19­12-1991) is interspersed throughout the book, providing a powerful testimony of the way institutions and deinstitutionalization have affected one individual over the course of almost a century. Researchers and practitioners will find this book an insightful and accessible reflection on deinstitutionalization, and a source of encouragement for improving the lives of people with intellectual disabilities.

My Brother Ron

My Brother Ron PDF Author: Clayton E. Cramer
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
ISBN: 9781477667538
Category : Mental health laws
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
America started a grand experiment in the 1960s: deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The consequences were very destructive: homelessness; a degradation of urban life; increases in violent crime rates; increasing death rates for the mentally ill. My Brother Ron tells the story of deinstitutionalization from two points of view: what happened to the author's older brother, part of the first generation of those who became mentally ill after deinstitutionalization, and a detailed history of how and why America went down this path. My Brother Ron examines the multiple strands that came together to create the perfect storm that was deinstitutionalization: a well-meaning concern about the poor conditions of many state mental hospitals; a giddy optimism by the psychiatric profession in the ability of new drugs to cure the mentally ill; a rigid ideological approach to due process that ignored that the beneficiaries would end up starving to death or dying of exposure.

Deinstitutionalization: Promise and Problems

Deinstitutionalization: Promise and Problems PDF Author: Richard H. Lamb
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 136

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Book Description
Both the scope and effects of deinstitutionalization have been dramatic. This volume examines both positive and negative effects of this mass movement of persons with severe mental illness out of the state hospitals and into the community. The chapters address the following issues: the use of community alternatives to state hospitalization; the very large numbers of persons with severe mental illness who have found their way into the criminal justice system, why this has happened, and what to do about it; the community treatment of mentally ill offenders; how to prevent inappropriate entry of mentally ill persons into the criminal justice system; the value of mental health consultation in courtroom settings; the therapeutic use of mental health conservatorship; and finally, psychiatric rehabilitation. Although deinstitutionalization for the most part can result in a much richer life experience in the community, much more needs to be done to make that occur. This is the 90th issue of the Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Mental Health Services.

Worlds of the Mentally Ill

Worlds of the Mentally Ill PDF Author: Dan A. Lewis
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Lewis offers a radically different perspective on care of the mentally ill now that these patients are no longer isolated from society. This book is based on a series of interviews conducted with 313 Chicago area patients released from four different state hospitals. Rather than rely on retrospective data-gathering on patients at intake, Lewis began at the time of release, tracking the patients for 12 months during which they were interviewed twice. This approach permitted Lewis and his researchers to discover where the patients went, whom they turned to for help, how they viewed themselves and their illness, and how they fared. Former patients who had lost their homes and support networks by alienating families and employers ended up on the streets and eventually in jail. Half of the patients interviewed had criminal records, a third of them having committed felonies. Of the former patients who returned to mental institutions, 97 percent did so voluntarily. One-fifth of those recommitted themselves because they lacked jobs and housing. Lewis says the government can help by providing more welfare funding, medication aid, support to patients’ families, and homeless shelters with qualified counselors. "If we don’t do anything about the poverty, we can’t do anything about the mental illness. We must tie work and welfare to treatment settings."

Out of the Shadows

Out of the Shadows PDF Author: E. Fuller Torrey
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The author "reveals how we have failed our mentally ill and offers a viable, provocative blueprint for change."--Jacket.