| The clubhouse model, of which Fountain House is the prototype, has emerged as one of the most effective means of psychiatric rehabilitation and a book describing it is long overdue. The house which became Fountain House was purchased in 1948, almost a half century ago, yet no article describing the program was published until 1982 and clubhouse standards were not set until 1991. Fountain House, in short, has been one of the best-kept secrets in the field of psychiatric rehabilitation except among a small coterie of individuals who have been fortunate enough to visit it. Many of these people then started their own clubhouses. |
| During the almost fifty years that Fountain House has existed, the need for its services has increased enormously. In 1955, when Fountain House was just getting off the ground, there were over 558,000 seriously mentally ill individuals in state psychiatric hospitals. Fountain House was in fact started by a small group of these individuals who had been discharged from New York's Rockland State Hospital. Today there are only approximately 71,000 individuals left in those hospitals. Subtracting 71,000 from 558,000 means that approximately 487,000 seriously mentally ill individuals who would have been hospitalized forty years ago are living in the community today. But that does not tell the whole story because the 558,000 hospitalized individuals was based on the 1955 United States population of 164 million people. Today the population is 260 million, so if we had the same proportion of people in the state psychiatric hospitals today, the number would be over 821,000. The real magnitude of deinstitutionalization then, is 821,000 minus 71,000 or approximately 750,000 people. That is the same number of people as who live in San Francisco or Baltimore. The need for Fountain House replicas is therefore enormous. Clubhouses provide seriously mentally ill individuals with a supportive network, |
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