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Community Mental Health Act

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On the 31st of October, 1963, President John F. Kennedy signed into law the Community Mental Health Act, which was intended to improve mental health services and the lives of individuals with mental illness and/or intellectual disability (DiGravio, 2013). Also known as the Mental Retardation and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963, this law led to the establishment of comprehensive community mental health clinics throughout the country, improved delivery and quality of mental health services, and the creation of a more optimistic sentiment in the mental healthcare field (DiGravio, 2013). Kennedy envisioned that this law would replace the country’s “reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolations” with “the open warmth …show more content…
Research indicates that strong social supports can make significant improvements for the recovery of those suffering with physical and/or mental illness (Haggerty & Mrazek, 1994). Today, many self-help groups, such as Alcoholics Anonymous and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, provide support for individuals and facility members of those with mental illness (Chaturvedi, (2016).
Since the Community Mental Health Act and the more recent Americans with Disabilities Act (2004), many social barriers have been reduced or removed for people with disabilities. In 1992, the American Association on Mental Retardation published a new definition of mental retardation that reflected a change in how the condition was viewed (Chaturvedi, (2016). According to David Coulter, the president of the AAMR, “mental retardation is not a disease. It is a statement about how a person is functioning cognitively within a social context.” It is Coulter’s belief that by changing the way society thinks about mental illness, it is more likely that we as a society, can work to improve an individual’s environment and therefore provide the necessary supports to increase their functioning (Ervin, Hennen, Merrick, & Morad …show more content…
For example, according to the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 68% of Americans do not want someone with a mental illness to marry into their family and 58% do not want people with mental illness in their workplace (Jones & Gallus, 2016). Given the recent increase in deadly mass shootings and negative portrayals of individuals with mental health issues in film and television, some attitudes towards mental illness has gotten even worse. Although people with mental illness are more than twice as likely to be the victim of violence, today’s society is twice as likely to believe that mentally ill people tend to be violent compared to public opinion in 1950 (Dingfelder,

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