The First Resort
The First Resort

Author: Matthew Smith

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2023-01-17

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 0231555288

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Social psychiatry was a mid-twentieth-century approach to mental health that stressed the prevention of mental illness rather than its treatment. Its proponents developed environmental explanations of mental health, arguing that socioeconomic problems such as poverty, inequality, and social isolation were the underlying causes of mental illness. The influence of social psychiatry contributed to the closure of psychiatric hospitals and the emergence of community mental health care during the 1960s. By the 1980s, however, social psychiatry was in decline, having lost ground to biological psychiatry and its emphasis on genetics, neurology, and psychopharmacology. The First Resort is a history of the rise and fall of social psychiatry that also explores the lessons this largely forgotten movement has to offer today. Matthew Smith examines four ambitious projects that investigated the relationship between socioeconomic factors and mental illness in Chicago, New Haven, New York City, and Nova Scotia. He contends that social psychiatry waned not because of flaws in its preventive approach to mental health but rather because the economic and political crises of the 1970s and the shift to the right during the 1980s foreclosed the social changes required to create a more mentally healthy society. Smith also argues that social psychiatry provides timely insights about how progressive social policies, such as a universal basic income, can help stem rising rates of mental illness in the present day.

Evaluating Managed Mental Health Services
Evaluating Managed Mental Health Services

Author: Leonard Bickman

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2004-05-31

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780306484377

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Based on a five-year evaluation of an $80 million U.S. Army demonstration program, this first-of-its kind study explores the cost effectiveness of a managed care model of service delivery for children and adolescents with mental health and substance addiction problems. Contributions report on the quality, cost, and clinical outcome and raise critical questions about the effectiveness of mental health services and their delivery in community settings. Chapters describe new approaches to measurement and provide analyses assisting future research on managed care.

Democracy Derailed
Democracy Derailed

Author: David S. Broder

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13:

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Offers an analysis of the political initiative process, which involves citizens voting directly on new laws.

Ungoverned and Out of Sight
Ungoverned and Out of Sight

Author: Charley E. Willison

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2021-01-09

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0197548342

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If health policy truly seeks to improve population health and reduce health disparities, addressing homelessness must be a priority Homelessness is a public health problem. Nearly a decade after the great recession of 2008, homelessness rates are once again rising across the United States, with the number of persons experiencing homelessness surpassing the number of individuals suffering from opioid use disorders annually. Homelessness presents serious adverse consequences for physical and mental health, and ultimately worsens health disparities for already at-risk low-income and minority populations. While some state-level policies have been implemented to address homelessness, these services are often not designed to target chronic homelessness and subsequently fail in policy implementation by engendering barriers to local homeless policy solutions. In the face of this crisis, Ungoverned and Out of Sight seeks to understand the political processes influencing adoption of best-practice solutions to reduce chronic homelessness in US municipalities. Drawing on unique research from three exemplar municipal case studies in San Francisco, CA, Atlanta, GA, and Shreveport, LA, this volume explores conflicting policy solutions in the highly decentralized homeless policy space and provides recommendations to improve homeless governance systems and deliver policies that will successfully diminish chronic homelessness. Until issues of authority and fragmentation across competing or misaligned policy spaces are addressed through improved coordination and oversight, local and national policies intended to reduce homelessness may not succeed.