Community absorption of the mentally ill: the new challenge

In 1975, twelve years after enactment of the Community Mental Health Centers Act, we find one of the greatest obstacles to fulfillment of our hopes to be pervasive hostility to acceptance of the mentally ill in many communities. The River Region Program has hurdled this obstacle by breaking the artificially large mental health catchment areas into manageable segments of 16 smaller service areas close to the people it serves in seven counties of Kentucky. In each of these service areas it has involved a broad spectrum of citizens in the planning of every service. All of this is of particular relevance today in light of the supreme Court's Donaldson decision, that mentally ill persons cannot be confined involuntarily if they are not dangerous and can live safely in the outside world. The "outside world" must be prepared to receive these people, and we in the mental health field must do our job in this vital preparation.