Symptoms of Institutional Care

During the last decade social scien-tists have begun to concern themselves with the effects of what Goffman (14) calls "the total institutions. " We are becoming familiar with people who have become so adjusted to hospital, jail, army, or concentration camp, that they cannot live outside. Labels have been given to these people such as "institutional cure, " "prisonized con-vict, " or "passive patient. " The under-lying process has been called "institu-tionitis, " "hospitalitis, " "depersonaliza-tion, " "prisonization, " and "desocializa-tion. " Under one or another of these