Funding Mental Healthcare in the Wake of Deinstitutionalization: How the United States and the United Kingdom Diverged in Mental Health Policy After Deinstitutionalization, and What We Can Learn From Their Differing Approaches to Funding Mental Healthcare

Deinstitutionalization was a mass movement away from institutional-focused mental healthcare in the mid-to-late twentieth century, which changed the dynamic of mental healthcare service provision in both the United States and United Kingdom. This Note analyzes the history and effects of deinstitutionalization on subsequent mental healthcare policy in those two nations, highlighting the key role of funding in shaping the success of mental health policy and programming. The focus on mental healthcare funding structures provides a lens to analyze the differences in financial funding, resource allocation, infrastructure development of community-based or alternative care services, and government and social support of mental healthcare in the United States and United Kingdom. This analysis of each nation’s funding structure illustrates how the mental healthcare policies of the United States and United Kingdom came to differ. This Note argues that understanding the divergence in financial context and funding between these two nations provides vital information about how policies towards mental health developed. Further, it argues that an understanding of these pecuniary differences can provide impetus for the United States and the United Kingdom to learn from each other’s weaknesses in order to strengthen future mental healthcare policies and programs