Word: cared
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Dates: during 1990-1990
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Federal officials say the report does not exaggerate. "We have 2.8 million people with serious mental illness, and only 1 in 5 is receiving adequate care," observes Dr. Lewis Judd, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. And the problem is sure to get worse. The majority of the sick live with their parents, whose average age is now between 50 and 60. When they die, many of their troubled children will land on the street. Baby boomers are moving through their 30s, the vulnerable years for late-onset schizophrenia. Moreover, the number of people with dementia...
Belief grew that the sick would fare better out of hospitals. Community clinics and halfway houses, it was argued, could provide needed care -- and at less expense than large institutions. So the exodus began. In 1955, state institutions had 552,000 patients; today the number...
...family counseling and treating drug abuse and alcoholism. Programs also came under attack from budget cutters. California's services, once held up as a model for the nation, are being slashed. The new state budget lops $73 million from a planned outlay of $520 million for the community-care system...
Across the U.S., mental-health care has become a shambles -- fragmented and misfocused. One problem: the system is geared to episodic, not chronic, care. "We're spending about 70% of our mental-health dollars for hospital care," complains Leonard Stein, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Mental Health Services Development Program. "What we're doing is waiting for people to have psychotic episodes and putting them in the hospital to take care of that, which we can do very well. But once the episode is over, that doesn't mean the person is cured." Patients are caught...
What is needed, say advocates for the mentally ill, is comprehensive care, tailored to people's individual needs and aimed at building self-esteem and the skills to manage on their own. Numerous demonstration programs attest that the mentally disturbed can lead safe, productive and happy lives outside institutions. The key elements: monitored medication, specialized training and a stable and supportive environment in which to live...