Abstract
The past decade has witnessed dramatic changes in the mental health system under the banner of the “patient rights and advocacy movement” This movement, spearheaded by members of the medical and legal professions and by expatients, has sought protection of basic human, clinical and civil rights, an end to patient abuse and the creation of a more responsive mental health system. The initial focus for rights and advocacy activities has been in public institutions where patients have been housed and all too frequently neglected. In recent years, there has been a shift in attention from hospital-based mental health care to the delivery of services in the community. Here too patients and their advocates have found it necessary to battle for the basic protections, entitlements and opportunities enjoyed by other citizens not stigmatized by the label mentally ill. Before describing mental health advocacy in detail, it would be valuable, in order to understand the strategies and priorities of each of the advocacy approaches, to review briefly some of the major events in the evolution of the nation’s mental health system which led to the development of the advocacy movement.
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© 1983 Spectrum Publications, Inc.
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Kopolow, L.E. (1983). Advocacy in the Community. In: Barofsky, I., Budson, R.D. (eds) The Chronic Psychiatric Patient in the Community. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6308-8_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-6308-8_19
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