From hospital to community care: the change in the mental health treatment system in California.

In 1968 California enacted a law transforming its state hospital centered mental health services to a single system of patient care based on local community responsibility. The 1968 law was not the cause of radical change in California, but rather the culmination of a process that began three decades earlier. The 1963 federal regulation enabling former mental patients to become eligible for categorical aid through public assistance programs and the development of psychoactive drugs were two necessary catalysts that provided the opportunity ot maintain many formerly hospitalized mental patients in the community and to avoid lengthy hospitalization of others.