Fifty years of public policy designed to eliminate state hospital beds have produced a psychiatric bed shortage unseen in the United States since the early 1800s – a gap between bed supply and demand that hurts individuals with serious mental illness and their communities and grows wider every year.
Known as “deinstitutionalization,” the drive to eliminate beds was motivated by the ideal that every mental hospital patient would be better off in a small community setting than in a larger facility. The goal was achieved with federal economic incentives, consumer advocacy and state legislation that restricted bed access to people whose symptoms had made them dangerous. The ideal of equivalent community-based care was never realized, leaving many who weren’t dangerous without hospital access.
A well-functioning mental health system provides a continuum of care for the entire spectrum of individuals with psychiatric conditions, including hospitalization. Such a continuum no longer exists in the United States.
Restoring psychiatric hospital beds by reforming the policies and practices that eliminate them from the spectrum is essential to providing a full range of treatment options for those who are most acutely or chronically ill.
Join the campaign to restore psychiatric hospital beds.
