The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 granted funds to states to create community mental health centers. The purpose of the Act was to provide community-based mental health care as an alternative to institutionalization. The benefit of the community-based care was to allow mental health patients and those with intellectual disabilities to live and work at home while undergoing treatment or supervised care (Office of NIH History, Public Law 88-164 Oct.31, 1963).
Those most affected by the Act were the mentally health patients and mentally handicapped individual who were released from institutions, and their families. Indirectly, the Act impacted community resources were overwhelmed by an influx of clients. A reading of Public Law 88-164 suggests that the primary target was the intellectual disabled group. In 1996, the CDC stated that the overall rate of intellectual disability was 11.5 individuals out of 1,000, which makes this disability the largest developmental disability in the U.S. At the time President Kennedy signed the bill, there were 500,000 individuals living in state-run mental intuitions in the U.S. Public Law 88-164 was the beginning of the de-institutionalizing movement in the U.S. Today, mental health and behavioral health care is provided by a combination of federal and state programs, such as Medicaid, Medicare, and not-for-profit and for-profit organizations (National Council for Behavioral Health, n.d.).
In the 60s, the media’s uncovering of the abysmal conditions within the institutions pushed the problem in front of the public and thus obliging the government to act. The strength of de-institutionalization of chronically ill and intellectually disabled individuals is the understanding that warehousing people over long periods of time without adequate treatment was ineffective, if not inhumane. The weaknesses of the Community Mental Health Act of 1963 was essentially the economic motivation to shift the cost of carrying for this population onto the states without much thought given to the mechanics of implementing the plan. For example, by the 1990s, only 3 percent of the chronically mentally were enrolled in vocational services programs (Becker & Drake, 1994). In summary, it was a well-intentioned but ill-conceived plan.
References
The Associated Press (October 20, 2013). Kennedy's vision for mental health never realized. USA Today. Retrieved from http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/20/kennedys-vision-mental-health/3100001/
Becker, D. R. and Drake, R. E. (1994). Individual placement and support: A community mental health center to vocational rehabilitation. Community Mental Health Journal, 30(2), 193-206.
CDC. (1996). State-specific rates of mental retardation – United States, 1993. Morbidity and Mortality Weeky Report, 45(3), 61-65. Print.
Public Law 88-164 – October 31, 1963. Retrieved from https://history.nih.gov/research/downloads/PL88-164.pdf..
National Council for Behavioral Health (n.d.). Community Mental Health Act. Retrieved April 17, 2016 from http://www.thenationalcouncil.org/about/national-mental-health-association/overview/community-mental-health-act/
Smith, T. E. and Sederer, L., I. (2009). A new kind of homelessness for individuals with serious mental illness? The need for a “Mental Health Home.” Psychiatric Services, 60(4). Retrieved from http://ibhp.org/uploads/file/mental%20health%20home(1).pdf
Rochefort, D. A., (1984). Origins of the “Third Psychiatric Revolution”: The Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 9(1), 1 – 30. doi: 10.1215/03616878-9-1-1
Rosenheck, R. (2000). The delivery of mental health services in the 21st century: bringing the community back in. Community Mental Health Journal, 36, 107–124. Print.
Young Minds Advocacy (n.d.). The Community Mental Health Act of 1963: Still Pursuing the Promise of Reform Fifty Years Later. Retrieved April 16, 2016 from https://www.youngmindsadvocacy.org/the-community-mental-health-act-of-1963/
