Federal Mental Health Policy Making: An Assessment of Deinstitutionalization

Argues that significant advances in psychopharmacology and psychology have occurred in the last 3 decades and that the technologies of treating serious mental disorders have improved accordingly. The authors describe the emerging issues of efficacious and cost-effective applications of these technologies to an increasingly complex system of needs and populations, their potential role in public policy, and their relationship to recent federal policy decisions. (December 1983)