Deinstitutionalization in France: 1960-1985

• In Event: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Politics and Strategy in Medical Associations

Abstract

This chapter is an excerpt from a book on the comparative politics of psychiatric deintitutionalization, which in turn provides a lens into how public sector workers shape the distribution of public services in advanced economies. Here I focus on the American case. The inclinations of the American Psychiatric Association’s public sector members notwithstanding, its otherwise private sector members diverted the organization's attention from the public mental health financing initiatives of the Great Society programs, restrained its support for the employees of deinstitutionalizing mental hospitals in the 1970s, and enabled the retrenchment of psychiatric services in the 1980s. In short, the political organization of public psychiatrists in the U.S. inadvertently reduced the supply of public mental health services and promoted the rapid deinstitutionalization of people with chronic illnesses, with dramatic consequences for their mental and physical well-being.

Author

• Isabel Maria Perera, University of Pennsylvania