The Chronic Patient: The Stranger in Our Midst

The chronic patient is perceived as being foreign or alien, a stranger who either will not or cannot integrate himself into the community's values and expectations. One concept of returning the mentally ill to the community, was proposed in 1855; the author describes that system and also a system of foster care and other kinds of community care established in Illinois in the early 1940s. He emphasizes the need for a climate that accepts and is acceptable to chronic patients, and he discusses certain aspects of their care, including the problem that the so-called communities in which they are placed are communities in name only.