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September 2005 (Volume 83)
Quarterly Article
Gerald N. Grob
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Mar 11, 2024
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President Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Commission on Mental Health was intended to recommend policies to overcome obvious deficiencies in the mental health system. Bureaucratic rivalries within and between governments; tensions and rivalries within the mental health professions; identity and interest group politics; the difficulties of distinguishing the respective etiological roles of such elements as poverty, racism, stigmatization, and unemployment; and an illusory faith in prevention all influenced the commission’s deliberations and subsequent enactment of the short-lived Mental Health Systems Act. The commission’s work led to the formulation of the influential National Plan for the Chronically Mentally Ill, but a system of care and treatment for persons with serious mental illnesses was never created.
Author(s): Gerald N. Grob
Keywords: Jimmy Carter’s Presidential Commission on Mental Health; Mental Health Systems Act; mental health policy; deinstitutionalization; mental illnesses
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Volume 83, Issue 3 (pages 425–456) DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0009.2005.00408.x Published in 2005
