The recognition of the serious problems of state hospitals that
dominated public policy in the 1960s has been largely overshadowed in
recent years by a preoccupation with the problems of
deinstitutionalization. The current backlash against the community movement
threatens to legitimize once again the state hospital as an acceptable
solution to the problems of the severely mentally ill. The author argues
that state hospitals are deficient not simply because they provide an
inferior quality of care but because they provide the wrong kind of care
for most of their patients. He suggests that most state hospitals be
completely replaced by a fundamentally different system.Abstract Teaser