Doctoral Dissertation Research: Psychiatric Deinstitutionalization and Community Mental Health Transitions

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2).

Psychiatric deinstitutionalization continues to pose challenges to local communities. These challenges encompass how to better provide care for the severely mentally ill at community mental health centers and within the community at large. In addition to providing funding for the training of a graduate student in anthropology in the methods of empirical data collection and analysis, this doctoral dissertation project provides a scientific analysis of the social effects of psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the everyday lives of community members, caregivers, and clients.

By examining scientifically the effects of psychiatric deinstitutionalization, this dissertation project will provide greater understanding of its effects in the everyday lives of community residents. The project also broadens the participation of underrepresented groups in science.

This doctoral dissertation research project examines how community members become involved in caring for deinstitutionalized clients and their community. It asks three main questions: (1) How are community residents involved in the process of psychiatric deinstitutionalization? (2) How are practices of community care enacted? (3) Does psychiatric deinstitutionalization reshape the boundaries between the clinic and the community?

The researcher will conduct ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and archival research to explore the social effects of psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the community. Remote fieldwork methods such as virtual interviews, photovoice, and journaling, will also be used. Data will be thematically coded and analyzed carefully to explore how discourses around psychiatric deinstitutionalization, community mental health, and community care are developed and enacted by caregivers, clients, and community members.

By scientifically investigating how community members participate in community care activities for deinstitutionalized clients, and by asking what happens to the boundaries between clinic and community, this dissertation project will make significant contributions to research on mental health care in the community setting.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.