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1. Metzel tells us that: “Anti-psychiatry went hand in hand with an international movement called deinstitutionalization that pushed for the liberation of people warehoused in psychiatric hospitals.” He states that JFK’s October 1963 Community Mental Health Act caused a “mass exodus” of persons leaving institutions. (134) Was the deinstitutionalization movement a success? Why or why not?
2. The text concludes that “many mental health professionals feel something is deeply wrong with a system that incarcerates so many mentally ill persons or that posits prisons as primary treatment centers.” (210) This lack of care means prisons, regional jails, and lock-ups are very dangerous places. Inmates are often injured or killed. What is the solution?
Submitted by Bonnie Akkerman I pledge…
1. “Ionia charts suggest that institutional factors coded schizophrenia as a black disease in ways that influenced the perceptions, actions, and experiences of doctors and patients,” (pg. 156). I find this statement interesting because Metzl actually got to look at charts from Ionia. We have discussed how hard it can be to obtain patient medical information (especially from Dr. McClurken's own experiences), however I am curious if Metzl was right, ethically, to publish such documentation in his book. I can understand him having permission, but he published part of Alice Wilson's charts on page 164. What does everyone else think of this?
2. Szasz describes mental institutions as asylum-prisons (pg. 183). I find this ironic since Ionia is one of the first examples we've seen that went from hospital to prison. The term is scarily accurate in this case.
Submitted by Lyndsey Clark. I pledge…