Abstract: | Mental health professionals often fail to recognize organizational phenomena which are significant to delivery of services. A current shift in service delivery is the move away from residential care to prevention programs. Rather than seeing this as the result of "new discoveries", the shift is viewed as an outcome of organizational developments. It is suggested that community mental health programs are produced by an institution having resources in excess of stabilized demands for treatment technology. This process of organizational diversification may have the surprising result of creating greater tendencies toward custodial treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |