Ten Years After: Evolving Mental Health Advocacy and Judicial Trends

"Address to the Mental Health Legal Advocacy Symposium, "Current Issues in Law and Psychiatry," New York, New York, May 30, 1985." This speech provides an overview of trends in mental disability law as they evolved from 1972 to 1982. It also explores social, economic, and political developments impacting on mental health advocacy, and looks at both seminal supreme court cases and lower courts' responses. It finds an ambivalent Supreme Court without a clear position on many issues related to mentally disabled individuals.