Washington Post Feature Examines Deinstitutionalization of People with Mental Illness

A Sunday Washington Post article profiled deinstitutionalization, a movement based on the belief that "lengthy confinement is tragically disabling" and that mentally ill individuals thrive better in community-based programs. The article chronicled the case of Joe Redd, a man who spent "32 of his 59 years" as a resident of St. Elizabeths Hospital, "a sprawling mental facility" in Washington, D.C. The Post details the fears Redd had of leaving the facility. Deinstitutionalization has grown in popularity in the United States, the Post reports, and its acceptance, along with advances in drugs designed to treat some mental illnesses, has led to "hundreds of thousands of people" being released from state-run facilities. However, funding for housing and assistance programs for the mentally ill "often [falls] short," and some former patients are "as doomed on the street as they were in the hospital," the Post reports. The Post reports that there is a "pathology of institutionalization" that sometimes limits the ability of patients to function outside of a confined setting. Steven Schwartz, executive director of the not-for-profit Center for Public Representation, said that when this happens "the responsibility of the folks who narrowed the world is to make the world bigger again," and hospitals must learn how to prepare patients for re-entry into society (Levine, Washington Post, 4/8).