From the Curative Asylum to the Broken System: Understanding Hopes and Realities in Mental Health System Transformation

Award Year: 2009	Investigator: Joel Braslow, John Brekke	Budget: $333,628	Categories: Mental Health
Abstract: Based on concepts of personal strength and empowerment, the Recovery Movement has become the major driving force of American mental health policy, and like similar efforts over the last two hundred years, recovery-oriented transformation promises dramatic hope for the care, treatment, and lives of those with severe mental illness. For their Investigator Award project, Joel T. Braslow, M.D., Ph.D., Frances M. O'Malley Chair in Neuroscience History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and John S. Brekke, Ph.D., Frances Larson Professor of Social Work and Associate Dean of Research at the University of Southern California, focus on the California Mental Health Services Act, a massive mental health policy endeavor and the largest effort to date aimed at a statewide recovery-oriented transformation. The investigators will describe the impact of California's mental health reform initiative in Los Angeles County and analyze how state and county policies, clinician practices, and cultural values shape treatment of mental illness. Their project, From the Curative Asylum to the Broken System: Understanding Hopes and Realities in Mental Health System Transformation, will also evaluate how networks of clinics, which provide integrated medical and social services and move patients from higher to lower levels of care as they recover, impact patients' outcomes and experiences. Drs. Braslow and Brekke will integrate the L.A. County experience with lessons learned from the past to examine whether the Recovery Movement provides a sound basis for viable mental health policy or whether alternative approaches hold promise for better meeting the complex needs of people with chronic mental illness. Project findings will help inform policy changes under consideration by states and counties throughout the country.