Background
Grob, Gerald N. was born on April 25, 1931 in New York City. Son of Sidney and Sylvia G. Grob.
( Severe and persistent mental illnesses are among the mo...)
Severe and persistent mental illnesses are among the most pressing health and social problems in contemporary America. Recent estimates suggest that more than three million people in the U.S. have disabling mental disorders. The direct and indirect costs of their care exceed 180 billion dollars nationwide each year. Effective treatments and services exist, but many such individuals do not have access to these services because of limitations in mental health and social policies. For nearly two centuries Americans have grappled with the question of how to serve individuals with severe disorders. During the second half of the twentieth century, mental health policy advocates reacted against institutional care, claiming that community care and treatment would improve the lives of people with mental disorders. Once the exclusive province of state governments, the federal government moved into this policy arena after World War II. Policies ranged from those focused on mental disorders, to those that focused more broadly on health and social welfare. In this book, Gerald N. Grob and Howard H. Goldman trace how an ever-changing coalition of mental health experts, patients' rights activists, and politicians envisioned this community-based system of psychiatric services. The authors show how policies shifted emphasis from radical reform to incremental change. Many have benefited from this shift, but many are left without the care they require. Â
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813539587/?tag=2022091-20
( The distinguished historian of medicine Gerald Grob ana...)
The distinguished historian of medicine Gerald Grob analyzes the post-World War II policy shift that moved many severely mentally ill patients from large state hospitals to nursing homes, families, and subsidized hotel rooms--and also, most disastrously, to the streets. On the eve of the war, public mental hospitals were the chief element in the American mental health system. Responsible for providing both treatment and care and supported by major portions of state budgets, they employed more than two-thirds of the members of the American Psychiatric Association and cared for nearly 98 percent of all institutionalized patients. This study shows how the consensus for such a program vanished, creating social problems that tragically intensified the sometimes unavoidable devastation of mental illness. Examining changes in mental health care between 1940 and 1970, Grob shows that community psychiatric and psychological services grew rapidly, while new treatments enabled many patients to lead normal lives. Acute services for the severely ill were expanded, and public hospitals, relieved of caring for large numbers of chronic or aged patients, developed into more active treatment centers. But since the main goal of the new policies was to serve a broad population, many of the most seriously ill were set adrift without even the basic necessities of life. By revealing the sources of the euphemistically designated policy of "community care," Grob points to sorely needed alternatives. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0691047901/?tag=2022091-20
( In the first comprehensive one-volume history of the t...)
In the first comprehensive one-volume history of the treatment of the mentally ill, the foremost historian in the field compellingly recounts our various attempts to solve this ever-present dilemma from colonial times to the present. Gerald Grob charts the growth of mental hospitals in response to the escalating numbers of the severely and persistently mentally ill and the deterioration of these hospitals under the pressure of too many patients and too few resources. Mounting criticism of psychiatric techniques such as shock therapies, drugs, and lobotomies and of mental institutions as inhumane places led to a new emphasis on community care and treatment. While some patients benefited from the new community policies, they were ineffective for many mentally ill substance abusers. Grob's definitive history points the way to new solutions. It is at once an indispensable reference and a call for a humane and balanced policy in the future.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1451636334/?tag=2022091-20
( The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions b...)
The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions between disease and the peoples of America from the pre-Columbian world to the present. Grob's ultimate lesson is stark but valuable: there can be no final victory over disease. The world in which we live undergoes constant change, which in turn creates novel risks to human health and life. We conquer particular diseases, but others always arise in their stead. In a powerful challenge to our tendency to see disease as unnatural and its virtual elimination as a real possibility, Grob asserts the undeniable biological persistence of disease. Diseases ranging from malaria to cancer have shaped the social landscape--sometimes through brief, furious outbreaks, and at other times through gradual occurrence, control, and recurrence. Grob integrates statistical data with particular peoples and places while giving us the larger patterns of the ebb and flow of disease over centuries. Throughout, we see how much of our history, culture, and nation-building was determined--in ways we often don't realize--by the environment and the diseases it fostered. The way in which we live has shaped, and will continue to shape, the diseases from which we get sick and die. By accepting the presence of disease and understanding the way in which it has physically interacted with people and places in past eras, Grob illuminates the extraordinarily complex forces that shape our morbidity and mortality patterns and provides a realistic appreciation of the individual, social, environmental, and biological determinants of human health.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674017579/?tag=2022091-20
( Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 ...)
Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 examines how American society responded to complex problems arising out of mental illness in the nineteenth century. All societies have had to confront sickness, disease, and dependency, and have developed their own ways of dealing with these phenomena. The mental hospital became the characteristic institution charged with the responsibility of providing care and treatment for individuals seemingly incapable of caring for themselves during protracted periods of incapacitation. The services rendered by the hospital were of benefit not merely to the afflicted individual but to the community. Such an institution embodied a series of moral imperatives by providing humane and scientific treatment of disabled individuals, many of whose families were unable to care for them at home or to pay the high costs of private institutional care. Yet the mental hospital has always been more than simply an institution that offered care and treatment for the sick and disabled. Its structure and functions have usually been linked with a variety of external economic, political, social, and intellectual forces, if only because the way in which a society handled problems of disease and dependency was partly governed by its social structure and values. The definition of disease, the criteria for institutionalization, the financial and administrative structures governing hospitals, the nature of the decision-making process, differential care and treatment of various socio-economic groups were issues that transcended strictly medical and scientific considerations. Mental Institutions in America attempts to interpret the mental hospital as a social as well as a medical institution and to illuminate the evolution of policy toward dependent groups such as the mentally ill. This classic text brilliantly studies the past in depth and on its own terms.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1412808502/?tag=2022091-20
Grob, Gerald N. was born on April 25, 1931 in New York City. Son of Sidney and Sylvia G. Grob.
Bachelor of Science, City College of New York, 1951. Master of Arts, Columbia University, 1952. Doctor of Philosophy, Northwestern University, 1958.
Doctor of Literature (honorary), Clark University, 2002.
Instructor history, Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1957-1959; assistant professor, Clark University, 1959-1961; associate professor, Clark University, 1961-1966; professor, Clark University, 1966-1969; department chairman history, Clark University, 1967-1969; Henry E. Sigerist professor of the history of medicine, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, since 1969; department chairman, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1969-1971, 73-74, 81-84. Member fellowship advising committee National Endowment for Humanities, 1975-1976. Chairman study section history of medicine National Institutes of Health, 1975-1977, 87-89, 93-98.
( The distinguished historian of medicine Gerald Grob ana...)
( In the first comprehensive one-volume history of the t...)
( Mental Institutions in America: Social Policy to 1875 ...)
( The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions b...)
( Severe and persistent mental illnesses are among the mo...)
(Book by Grob, Gerald N)
Elected to institute medicine National Academy of Sciences. Member of Organization American Historians, American Antiquarian Society, American Association History of Medicine (council member 1978-1981, vice president 1994-1996, president 1996-1998, William H. Welch medal 1986, Lifetime Achievement award 2006).
Married Lila Kronick, December 25, 1954. Children: Bradford S., Evan D., Seth A.