title: Public policy and mental illnesses: Jimmy Carter's Presidential Commission on Mental Health.
abstract: President Jimmy Carter's Presidential Commission on Mental Health was intended to recommend policies to overcome obvious deficiencies in the mental health system. Bureaucratic rivalries within and between governments; tensions and rivalries within the mental health professions; identity and interest group politics; the difficulties of distinguishing the respective etiological roles of such elements as poverty, racism, stigmatization, and unemployment; and an illusory faith in prevention all influenced the commission's deliberations and subsequent enactment of the short-lived Mental Health Systems Act. The commission's work led to the formulation of the influential National Plan for the Chronically Mentally Ill, but a system of care and treatment for persons with serious mental illnesses was never created.
authors.affiliation: Rutgers University, Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. ggrob@ifh.rutgers.edu
authors.forename: Gerald N
authors.initials: GN
authors.lastname: Grob
mesh_terms: D003688:Deinstitutionalization; D006801:Humans; D001523:Mental Disorders; D008603:Mental Health; D008605:Mental Health Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D011057:Politics; D011640:Public Policy; D014481:United States