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Article: Current issues in mental health care: Introduction
- Article from:
- Vanderbilt Law Review
- Article date:
- April 1, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Vanderbilt Law Review Apr 1997. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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INTRODUCTION
When America was founded in the late eighteenth century, doctors treated mental illness with beatings, isolation, and physical restraint-all thought to help the patient regain inner reason. People exhibiting strange behavior were often forced onto the streets, run out of town, or thrown into jail.2
Today we think we know a lot more about mental health care than our country's founders did. Yet in many ways we are in no better position than our eighteenth-century predecessors. Certainly, the decisions we as a society face about mental illness are just as difficult. The vocabulary we employ is more complex-"behavioral health organization," "psychopharmacology," "cost ...