Word: mentalism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...successful aspects, it also brought new problems. Says Robert Michels: "Thirty years ago, 75% of all psychiatric treatment was conducted in hospitals. Today, 75% takes place in an outpatient setting. That's progress." Still psychiatric patients fill 40% of all hospital beds in the nation, and the number of mental patients in nursing homes, prisons and single-room occupancy residences is up. Says Payne Whitney's John Talbott: "We've merely shifted the mentally ill population, not decreased...
Instead of emptying out, state hospitals are just as crowded?but with a higher percentage of untreatable patients. Many of these hapless people, in addition to their mental problems, are poor, infirm or alone and without any basic social skills to survive in the outside world. The drive to empty the hospitals may have gone as far as it can go. The readmission rate is up from 25% in 1960 to more than 65% today, which may indicate that too many have been released. As many as half of those discharged are now living alone, without the family support that...
...roaming the streets, annoying and frightening the citizenry. Some communities, even such liberal ones as Manhattan's Upper West Side, which has been flooded by thousands of deinstitutionalized patients, are beginning to cry out in anger. Says Manhattan Councilman An-.onio Olivieri, a liberal reformer: "The indiscriminate dumping of mental patients is creating new psychiatric ghettos in the cites. The policy is absurd." Psychiatrists are starting to share his concern. They fear that the increasing number of schizophrenics and other psychotics on the loose, particularly in the cities, may yet develop into an explosive political issue...
...community mental-health centers have their own headaches. Funding is short, and the goal of low-cost care is proving illusory. According to various estimates, each patient visit costs between $35 and $40, more than in private practice, for treatment that is generally of lower quality. Says Alan Stone, professor of law and psychiatry at Harvard: "Taking care of people well cannot be done in a less expensive way than just warehousing them, which was what we were doing before...
...with thinking and can become habit-forming. The antidepressants, called tricyclics, are increasingly effective, but also can have adverse side effects. The stronger antipsychotic drugs like Thorazine are useful for handling schizophrenics, whose behavior is characterized by hallucinations and severely disordered thinking, as well as other forms of severe mental disorder. But while these chemicals produce a rapid return to normal, or at least socially acceptable behavior, in some patients, they also act as chemical restraints: they calm the schizophrenic but often turn him into little more than a zombie in the process. As Psychologist Steven Matthysse of the Mailman...