Significant changes have occurred in the United States in the last 30 years relative to the delivery of services to mentally retarded people. This paper explores the development of community service options in the United States since the late 1950s. The development of these new services is viewed relative to concerns with both deinstitutionalization and normalization. From the vantage point of the mid-1980s, the paper also explores the importance of information on the continuum of care cycle of mentally retarded individuals throughout the life cycle as an important guide to the understanding of how the American mental retardation service system functions.

Deinstitutionalization↗

PubMed1987

The two cultures revisited.

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Community Mental Health Services↗

PubMed1987

Problems in the classification of congenital anomalies.

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Congenital Abnormalities↗

PubMed1986

A minimum data set for mental retardation.

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Data Collection↗

PubMed1986

Multiprofessional perspectives on prevention.

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Environment↗

PubMed1985

Proposal for information networks in mental retardation.

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Humans↗

PubMed1975

The state mental hospital in transition. Illinois state mental hospitals decentralize.

In this paper, we have looked at mental hospital decentralization as it has developed in the thirteen State of Illinois mental hospitals as of June 30, 1967. The hospitals were looked at from the most centralized to the most decentralized. This was done by relating the hospitals to five descriptive model types, described at greater length elsewhere. Hospital decentralization is portrayed as a complex and highly idiosyncratic process. Attempts to place specific hospitals at point along the decentralization continuum are thus tentative and clear rules for classifying stages of decentralization have yet to be formulated. Complicating the picture still further is that hospitals in transition change rapidly and may at even intervals of a month show dramatic change. It is expected that the trend implied is stable, however, and that ultimately all Illinois state mental hospital with possible exception of ISPI and Illinois Security Hospital, will be located at the decentralized model. This is seen as necessary if they are to survive as viable treatment institutions.

Commitment of Persons with Psychiatric Disorders↗