The goal of community mental health services often includes much more than simply providing outpatient psychiatric treatment.
On July 3, 1946, President Harry Truman signed the National Mental Health Act which, for the first time in the history of the United States, generated a large amount of federal funding for both psychiatric education and research.
[4] At the end of the 1940s and moving into the beginning of the 1950s, the governor of Minnesota Luther Youngdahl initiated the development of numerous community-based mental health services.
[4] Philippe Pinel played a large role in the ethical and humane treatment of patients and greatly influenced Dorothea Dix.
[5][page needed] Following deinstitutionalization, many of the mentally ill ended up in jails, nursing homes, and on the streets as homeless individuals.
[5][page needed] It was at this point in history that modern community mental health services started to grow and become influential.
With the passing of this Act, the U.S. Congress called for "an objective, thorough, nationwide analysis and reevaluation of the human and economic problems of mental health.
President John F. Kennedy ran part of his campaign on a platform strongly supporting community mental health in the United States.
Kennedy's ultimate goal was to reduce custodial care of mental health patients by 50% in ten to twenty years.
In 1965, with the passing of Medicare and Medicaid, there was an intense growth of skilled nursing homes and intermediate-care facilities that alleviated the burden felt by the large-scale public psychiatric hospitals.
This continuing process of deinstitutionalization without adequate alternative resources led the mentally ill into homelessness, jails, and self-medication through the use of drugs or alcohol.
[5][page needed] In 1975 Congress passed an Act requiring community mental health centers to provide aftercare services to all patients in the hopes of improving recovery rates.
[5][page needed] This Act strengthened the connection between federal, state, and local governments with regards to funding for community mental health services.
It effectively ended federal funding of community treatment for the mentally ill, shifting the burden entirely to individual state governments.
[8] As the 1990s began, many positive changes occurred for people with mental illnesses through the development of larger networks of community-based providers and added innovations with regards to payment options from Medicare and Medicaid.
[11] The staggering new numbers of patients then are being forced to seek specialized treatment from their primary care providers or hospital emergency rooms.
Political views aside, it is clear that these community mental health centers exist largely to aid areas painfully under resourced with psychiatric care.
[12] Networks like Open Path Collective, established in 2015, offer discounted rates to uninsured and underinsured people who cannot otherwise afford psychotherapy.
[16] The combination of a mental illness as a clinical diagnosis, functional impairment with one or more major life activities, and distress is highest in ages 18–25 years old.
Psychosocial interventions that encourage self-exploration and self-awareness, such as acceptance and mindfulness-based therapies, is useful in preventing and treating mental health concerns.
The center serves a wide range of ethnicities and socio-economic statuses in the City Heights community with counselors who are graduate student therapists getting their Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy or Community Counseling from San Diego State University, as well as post-graduate interns with their master's degree, who are preparing to be licensed by the state of California.