The Pros And Cons Of The Promotion Of Community Mental Health

. In the 1960s, concurrent with the growing attention on mental health, the promotion of community mental health centers became a major federal initiative after the U.S. passed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act in 1963. The construction of mental health centers in local communities exploded. Their bold agenda in transitioning patients out of state psychiatric hospitals and into communities was aimed to promote more humane treatment and foster social reintegration (Blair & Espinoza, 2015). However, a negative and unforeseen consequence of the deinstitutionalization initiative was the resultant increase in the homeless population due to patients not seeking services in their community.
Federal Policies & Organizations. In 1965 President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare
Building on the advancements of the 1960’s, the nature-nurture debate about depression gained some leverage in 1971 when Martin Roth further describes the endogenous and reactive subtypes of depression. This is an important event because it distinguished reactive depression which is due to some unfortunate event in a person’s life from endogenous depression which is instigated by an internal psychological or neurological condition that does not require a disturbing environmental event (Zimmerman, Coryell, Pfohl, & Stangl, 1986).
In the 1970’s, several theories were introduced such as task-centered, environmental press, and risk and resilience which could all be applied in understanding the phenomenon of geriatric depression, as well inform social work practice. The task-centered approach was introduced by Reid and Epstein in the 1970’s and soon became the predominant treatment for depressed older adults in residential facilities (Dierking, Brown, & Fortune, 1980). The task-centered approach emphasized structure with well-defined activities for the achievement of practice objectives (Reid & Epstein,