scholarly journals Community care in crisis – homelessness and mental illness

1991 ◽  
Vol 15 (5) ◽  
pp. 285-285
Author(s):  
Julian H. Race
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Professional Care ◽  
The Church

One week before Christmas in the crypt at the Church of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Dr Malcolm Weller addressed a conference for CONCERN (Care of the Neglected: Combining Education, Rehabilitation and Nursing). The purpose of the conference was to highlight the plight of mentally ill, homeless people and to emphasise the strengths and shortcomings of the professional care available for them.

Homelessness, Mental Illness and the Law

1997 ◽  
Vol 37 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-344 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walid Abdul-Hamid ◽  
Colm Cooney
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Psychiatric Disorders ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Social Background ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Major Difficulty ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Homeless Mentally Ill ◽  
Court Diversion

One major difficulty that faces both researchers and practitioners who work with the homeless is the lack of definitions and frameworks that assist better understanding of such people's problems and society's response to them. This article reviews the legislation dealing with homeless people's social, civil and legal problems. We tried to give this legislation's historic and social background, including a section on psychiatric disorders in this group because of then-relevance to current debate on homeless offenders. We then reviewed the legislation relevant to homeless people in general and the homeless mentally ill in particular, including the recently introduced court diversion schemes.

scholarly journals After the madhouses: the emotional politics of psychiatry and community care in the UK tabloid press 1980–1995

2021 ◽  
pp. medhum-2020-012117
Author(s):  
Leah Sidi
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Hospital Patients ◽  
Emotional Politics ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Gendered Stereotypes ◽  
Tabloid Press

The deinstitutionalisation of mental hospital patients made its way into UK statutory law in 1990 in the form of the NHS and the Community Care Act. The Act ushered in the final stage of asylum closures moving the responsibility for the long-term care of mentally ill individuals out of the NHS and into the hands of local authorities. This article examines the reaction to the passing of the Act in two major tabloid presses, The Sun and The Daily Mirror, in order to reveal how community care changed the emotional terrain of tabloid storytelling on mental health. Reviewing an archive of 15 years of tabloid reporting on mental illness, I argue that the generation of ‘objects of feeling’ in the tabloid media is dependent on the availability of recognisable and stable symbols. Tabloid reporting of mental illness before 1990 reveals the dominance of the image of the asylum in popular understandings of mental illness. Here the asylum is used to generate objects of hatred and disgust for the reader, even as it performs a straightforward othering and distancing function. In these articles, the image of the asylum and its implicit separation of different types of madness into categories also do normative gender work as mental illness is represented along predictable gendered stereotypes. By performing the abolition of asylums, the 1990 Act appears to have triggered a dislodging of these narrative norms in the tabloid press. After 1990, ‘asylum stories’ are replaced with ‘community care stories’ which contain more contradictory and confusing clusters of feeling. These stories rest less heavily on gendered binaries while also demonstrating a near-frantic desire on the part of the mass media for a return of institutional containment. Here, clusters of feeling becoming briefly ‘unstuck’ from their previous organisations, creating a moment of affective flux.

Community Care: An Analysis of Assumptions

1975 ◽  
Vol 127 (3) ◽  
pp. 276-285 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Hawks
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Care And Treatment

SummaryThe implementation of a policy of ‘community care’ is seen to involve a number of assumptions, some of which are rarely examined. These can be roughly categorized as involving the nature of mental illness, the nature of community, the course and treatment of mental illness, the proper scope of psychiatry, the burden on the community and the efficacy of social work. Data bearing on these assumptions are reviewed, and the conclusion is offered that they are far from being uncontentious.It is suggested that the movement toward community care has many of the attributes of a moral enterprise which, unless substantiated by benefits to the patient or his family, may be the latest diversion of the psychiatric conscience from the care and treatment of the chronic mentally ill.

Psychiatric Rehabilitation

1982 ◽  
Vol 45 (12) ◽  
pp. 372-376
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Burrows
Keyword(s):  
At Risk ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Psychiatric Rehabilitation ◽  
Current Approach ◽  
Process Of Care ◽  
Historical Developments ◽  
Dictionary Definitions

Rehabilitation has come to mean more than what is contained in standard dictionary definitions, as the author explains at the outset. Historical developments are described because in future years the current approach to mental illness might be regarded as a watershed between custodial and community care. Consideration is also given to some aspects of present day practices with ‘Long-stay’ and ‘New long-stay’ patients. Finally rehabilitation may be regarded as no longer an adjunct but an integral part of the process of care of the mentally ill. All rehabilitation is at risk if adequate resources are not available.

Beyond the walls: the mentally ill in Ireland outside the institutions in 1901

2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-282 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. D. Kelly ◽  
N. Sherrard
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Psychiatric Hospitals ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Point Prevalence ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Never Married ◽  
And Gender

ObjectivesIreland’s rates of psychiatric institutionalisation increased rapidly throughout the 1800s and early 1900s. This paper provides a systematic analysis of individuals with mental illness who were not resident in psychiatric hospitals, workhouses or other institutions in 1901.MethodsWe examined the online census records of all individuals described as ‘lunatics’ on the island of Ireland, not resident in psychiatric hospitals, workhouses or other institutions on census night, 1901.ResultsThere were 482 individuals described as ‘lunatics’ and not resident in psychiatric hospitals, workhouses or other institutions on 31 March 1901, yielding a point prevalence of 10.6 per 100 000 population. The lowest prevalence (7.8) was in Leinster (possibly owing to provision of workhouses and asylums); the highest prevalence was in Connaught (17.5) (p=0.013). A majority of them (60.4%) were women. Mean age was 45.7 years. In addition, a majority were single (never married) (63.7%); 33.3% of women were married, compared with 14.1% of men (p<0.001). The most common relationship to the head of the household was child (32.8%), although some were boarders or lodgers. The majority were Roman Catholic (82.0%) and could ‘read and write’ (64.5%). Among those for whom ability to speak Irish was recorded, 74.4% spoke both Irish and English.ConclusionThere were significant geographical and gender differences within the population recorded in the 1901 census as mentally ill and outside institutions. This group merits further study, especially with regard to their distribution in relation to asylum locations, and the extent to which they were cared for in communities, possibly prefiguring later models of community care.

Projection and Introjection

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
R.D. Hinshelwood
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Severe Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Community Care ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Ethical Principles ◽  
Organizational Dynamics ◽  
Dynamic Approach ◽  
Personal Functioning

Psychiatry straddles a medical approach to the mentally ill, and a dynamic approach to the experiences of severely disturbed people. One consequence of this is that ethical principles apply in different ways. The understanding of processes known as introjection, projection, and splitting seriously disrupt the functioning of a person and his ability to make adequate, responsible decisions. Severe mental illness can be regarded as the disruption of a moral agent, and in a sense treatment has to focus on the resumption of those functions that enable the person to take responsibility again. This chapter explores the ethics of the person’s loss of his personal functioning. Paternalism does not have a free rein, and needs to be carefully used as it supplants autonomy. Over-extended paternalistic care leads to excessive depletion of the patient, and was apparent in the old mental hospital as it still is in contemporary community care as specific organizational dynamics.

Homelessness and Mental Illness

1993 ◽  
Vol 162 (3) ◽  
pp. 314-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Scott
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Homeless People ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
Homeless Mentally Ill ◽  
Acute Distress ◽  
Co Morbidity ◽  
Pathways To Homelessness ◽  
Possible Cause

In Great Britain 1–2 million people may be homeless. Most homeless people are men, but about 10–25% are women, of whom about half are accompanied by children. Significant mental illness is present in 30–50% of the homeless: functional psychoses predominate; acute distress and personality dysfunction are also prevalent. Co-morbidity of mental illness and substance abuse occurs in 20%, and physical morbidity rates exceed those of domiciled populations. The homeless mentally ill also have many social needs. Pathways to homelessness are complex; deinstitutionalisation may be only one possible cause of the increase in the number of homeless people. There is much recent research estimating the extent of mental illness and the characteristics of selected subgroups of accessible homeless people. The evaluation of potential service solutions has received less attention. This review outlines the research, highlights current views on the definition and classification of homeless populations, and offers some guidelines on avenues which need to be explored.

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