Social Environment and Mental Illness: The Progress and Paradox of Deinstitutionalization
50 Years After Deinstitutionalization: Mental Illness in Contemporary Communities
ISBN: 978-1-78560-403-4, eISBN: 978-1-78560-402-7
Publication date: 4 July 2016
Abstract
Purpose
Reexamination and reinterpretation of the process of deinstitutionalization of public mental hospital inpatients.
Methodology/approach
A comprehensive review of related research is presented and lessons learned for the sociology of mental health are identified.
Findings
The processes of both institutionalization and deinstitutionalization were motivated by belief in the influence of the social environment on the course of mental illness, but while in the early 19th century the social environment of the mental hospital was seen as therapeutic, later in the 20th century the now primarily custodial social environment of large state mental hospitals was seen as iatrogenic. Nonetheless, research in both periods indicated the benefit of socially supportive environments in the hospital, while research on programs for deinstitutionalized patients and for homeless persons indicated the value of comparable features in community programs.
Research limitations/implications
While the process of deinstitutionalization is largely concluded, research should focus on identifying features of the social environment that can maximize rehabilitation.
Practical implications
The debate over the merits of hospital-based and community-based mental health services is misplaced; policies should instead focus on the alternatives for providing socially supportive environments. Deinstitutionalization in the absence of socially supportive programs has been associated with increased rates of homelessness and incarceration among those most chronically ill.
Originality/value
A comprehensive analysis of deinstitutionalization that highlights flaws in prior sociological perspectives and charts a new direction for scholarship.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
I am grateful for the comments of the two anonymous expert reviewers.
Citation
Schutt, R.K. (2016), "Social Environment and Mental Illness: The Progress and Paradox of Deinstitutionalization", 50 Years After Deinstitutionalization: Mental Illness in Contemporary Communities (Advances in Medical Sociology, Vol. 17), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 91-118. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1057-629020160000017004
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2016 Emerald Group Publishing Limited