Title: Is the Mental Health System “Broken”? | Psychology Today
Headings: Is the Mental Health System “Broken”?
Philip Yanos Ph.D.
Is the Mental Health System “Broken”?
The oft-repeated phrase is seldom questioned.

Content: Is the Mental Health System “Broken”? | Psychology Today
Philip Yanos Ph.D.
Written Off
Is the Mental Health System “Broken”? The oft-repeated phrase is seldom questioned. Posted Oct 11, 2018
SHARE
TWEET
EMAIL
“The mental health system is broken.” This phrase is now used with great regularity by the popular media, politicians, “advocacy” organizations, and even governments themselves responsible for delivering mental health services (a Google search of the phrase in quotes turned up over 51,000 search results). Related to endorsement of this statement are beliefs that mental health service providers fail in their responsibility to prevent mass shootings ( endorsed by nearly half of Americans ), that homelessness is caused by deinstutionalization, and that community mental health systems abandon people released from psychiatric hospitals with no aftercare follow-up. The New York Times, speaking from its editorial page platform this past June, went so far as to proclaim that no one disagrees that the current community-based mental health system is a “colossal failure” (with the recommendation that more people with mental illnesses need to be permanently confined in institutions). When phrases are repeated so frequently, they can become part of the “ conventional wisdom ,” defined as “generally accepted belief, opinion, judgment, or prediction about a particular matter.” The conventional wisdom is a potentially powerful tool for influencing social behavior, and can thus be a force for good or ill, depending on how closely it aligns with scientific evidence. Researcher and sociologist Bruce Link has discussed the need for researchers to communicate scientific findings in order to turn “social misunderstanding” in the general public into “social understanding.”