Luckily the story does not end there, although few have followed its twists and turns since. State officials have spent the last 20 years filling in the gaps for the thousands of mental patients who would otherwise have been in state asylums. Any attempt to understand where they went has to start in group homes, the cornerstone of community-based mental health. In the old days, a halfway house was just what it sounds like, a stopover between the hospital and community, and it came in just one flavor. Today there is a potpourri of approaches, from urban settings like South Boston to outlying ones like Winchendon.
Residents stay a year or less in some, permanently at a few others.
Many have special restrictions, accepting only men or women, or limited to Asians, Latinos, people who were homeless or those with drug and alcohol addictions. In 1950, there were no mental patients in group homes or comparable settings in Massachusetts. Today there are 6,237. A late afternoon visit to a group home in Jamaica Plain finds some residents helping cook dinner, one playing the piano, while others sit and talk about their day. After years of going in and out of mental hospitals, Delois Howell said she cherishes the support and freedom of her current home.