The Importance Of Community Mental Health

Community-based services were created to provide services that focused on “support, especially to individuals needing multiple elements of supportive services such as vocational, housing, medical, and mental health (SUO, 2016, para.1).” Being based out in the community meant that services available were based on the size and the economics of the town, city, or county. Transitions from institutional services to the community also allowed for “a direct link to person-centered advocacy”, as well as a voice in the person’s treatment (SUO, 2016, para. 3). However great these changes are community-based behavioral and mental health services took years to get where they are. State institutional hospitals were some of the first forms of behavioral and mental health support beginning in the 1800s. Many people were committed during the early years for a wide array of psychiatric diagnoses such as: “want of employment, mortified pride, loss of friends, love affair, domestic trouble, and masturbation” (Soreff & Bazemore, 2005). Much of the staff were like the modern-day staffing of both community-based and state hospitals: physicians, nurses, and dental. Comparatively, the older institutions also practiced surgeries of the brain and body to cure the …show more content…
One main point of the act was to look at “prevention and intervention”, while still looking at “a continuum of care” (Ahr, 2005). While, Ahr notes that the continuum of care has transformed throughout the years there are two elements that it looks at: required service mandated by the DMH, and “providing a full range of services” that include adult behavioral and mental services, youth and child emotional disturbance support, and counseling