<P> Numerous social forces led to a move for deinstitutionalization; researchers generally give credit to six main factors: criticisms of public mental hospitals, incorporation of mind - altering drugs in treatment, support from President Kennedy for federal policy changes, shifts to community - based care, changes in public perception, and individual states' desires to reduce costs from mental hospitals . </P> <P> According to American psychiatrist Loren Mosher, most deinstitutionalisation in the USA took place after 1972, as a result of the availability of SSI and Social Security Disability, long after the antipsychotic drugs were used universally in state hospitals . This period marked the growth in community support funds and community development, including early group homes, the first community mental health apartment programs, drop - in and transitional employment, and sheltered workshops in the community which predated community forms of supportive housing and supported living . </P> <P> According to psychiatrist and author Thomas Szasz, deinstitutionalisation is the policy and practice of transferring homeless, involuntarily hospitalised mental patients from state mental hospitals into many different kinds of de facto psychiatric institutions funded largely by the federal government . These federally subsidised institutions began in the United States and were quickly adopted by most Western governments . The plan was set in motion by the Community Mental Health Act as a part of John F. Kennedy's legislation and passed by the U.S. Congress in 1963, mandating the appointment of a commission to make recommendations for "combating mental illness in the United States". </P> <P> The public's awareness of conditions in mental institutions began to increase during World War II . Conscientious objectors (COs) of the war were assigned to alternative positions which suffered from manpower shortages . Around 2,000 COs were assigned to work in understaffed mental institutions . In 1946, an exposé in Life magazine detailed the shortfalls of many mental health facilities . This exposé was one of the first featured articles about the quality of mental institutions . </P>

When did deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill begin