“Community psychiatry” is simply mental health care provided by the community through public funds— rather than by the individual or by voluntary groups through private funds. It is as old as the practice of psychiatry in America. (In most other countries, too, psychiatry began as a community enterprise and never ceased to function in that role.)
However, fresh as the term “community psychiatry” is, many psychiatrists freely admit that it is just another slogan in the profession’s unremitting campaign to sell itself to the public. It is praised and recommended as if it were some novel medical advance which promises to revolutionize the “treatment” of the “mentally ill.” I shall not here attempt an historical study of our subject. Let it suffice to note the specific forces that launched psychiatry as a discrete movement or discipline. These forces are of two kinds—one political, the other psychiatric.
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