Unbalanced: Mental Health Policy in Ontario, 1930-1989

Robert B. MacIntyre is the Head of the Psychoeducational Clinic at the
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.

This historical study of the events, individuals, reports, and decisions
that constituted the policies governing mental-health services in
Ontario for 60 years is informative and ultimately depressing. Simmons
documents the ad hoc nature of decision-making in this area, and the
lack of a coherent government policy and of public support for
individuals experiencing mental illness.

The period Simmons has chosen included remarkable changes in the
conceptualization of the nature of mental illness, in the relative roles
of medicine and psychiatry, and in the treatment modalities advocated.
Changes in services during this time were apparently incremental and
uncoordinated, which perpetuate many concerns repeatedly expressed since
the 1930s.

Problem areas and the mental-health system’s abuses of individuals
are presented dispassionately, with the focus on government and
community attempts to deal with them. This is a scholarly presentation,
not a polemic, although the reader can find sufficient basis for
retrospective outrage and present concern.