Better But Not Well
Subtitle: Mental Health Policy in the United States since 1950
Edition: 1 edition
Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: August 2, 2006
Language: eng
Format: Paperback
Number of pages: 208
ISBN-13: 9780801884436
Subjects: Central government policies; Mental Health Services; Social welfare & social services; Postwar period, 1945 to c 2000; Mental Health; History; Medical; Medical / Nursing; United States; USA; Health Policy; Medical / Ethics; General; Mental health policy; Statistics; trends
Description: This book examines the well-being of people with mental illness in the United States over the past fifty years, addressing issues such as economics, treatment, standards of living, rights, and stigma. Marshaling a range of new empirical evidence, they first argue that people with mental illness--severe and persistent disorders as well as less serious mental health conditions--are faring better today than in the past. Improvements have come about for unheralded and unexpected reasons. Rather than being a result of more effective mental health treatments, progress has come from the growth of private health insurance and of mainstream social programs--such as Medicaid, Supplemental Security Income, housing vouchers, and food stamps--and the development of new treatments that are easier for patients to tolerate and for physicians to manage.