Treatment with Dignity

Of course, community treatment may not be appropriate for everyone with a serious mental illness. In the Journal of the American Medical Association, Dominic Sisti, Elizabeth Sinclair, and Steven Sharfstein note that a significant decline in inpatient hospital beds has shifted care to less optimal settings. In Insane Consequences: How the Mental Health Industry Fails the Mentally Ill, I documented that the decline in beds is inversely associated with incarceration rates.Sisti maintains that an ethical system should provide both inpatient and outpatient health care. More than a generation of deinstitutionalization has resulted in fewer inpatient beds for the few who truly need them.