History strikes again: two 20th-century reform ventures.

There are striking parallels between the rise and decline of the health center movement of the early decades of this century and the community mental health center movement of the sixties. Four ideas that dominated the early health center movement--district location, preventive care, community participation, and bureaucratic organization--were also important in the development of community mental health centers. Both movements initially were expressions of the reform spirit of the times and later were undermined by the shift to conservative domestic politics.