Build a better state hospital: deinstitutionalization has failed.

Abstract

The author cites increasing numbers of chronic, homeless, and neglected mentally ill people as evidence of the failure of deinstitutionalization and community care to live up to their promise to reduce chronicity, the need for long-term hospitalization, and even mental illness itself. He believes the state hospital system, despite having been maligned and nearly destroyed, has great therapeutic potential. It could provide extended care to acutely ill patients before they become chronically ill; restore the ability to pinpoint responsibility for patient care, which has been lost under community care; and provide a stimulating academic environment conducive to research into treatment of the mentally ill.