Our answer is that the primary location for care of mental illness is in the community. The goals of community based care are to help people with mental illness to succeed at home and to prevent crises that may require hospitalization. Here are some of the keys. Access is critical - ensuring that people who need service can get it. Individual input into care planning gives people maximum voice on the services that will be provided to them.
Medication is probably the most important treatment intervention.
Learning about the illness and its symptoms also gives individuals and families valuable tools in their own self-management of the illness. If you, your friend, or family member is or may be experiencing a mental illness, I encourage you to get more information. Your local library has information - ask at the desk. Local psychiatrists, counselors, and mental health services agencies - all in the yellow pages under those same words, can give you information or services. In decades past, our society isolated people with long term illnesses out of fear and embarrassment.