Our History

The Mental Health Association of Southeastern Pennsylvania (MHASP) is both an advocate for people with severe mental illnesses and a provider of community-based programs and services for mental health consumers.

MHASP was founded in Philadelphia in 1951 to advocate on behalf of people with mental illnesses. From the beginning, this has always meant trying to improve the lives of people who reside in psychiatric institutions.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, however, the advent of psychotropic medications that helped reduce the symptoms of mental illness led to the move to close hospitals and discharge patients into the community (known as deinstitutionalization). As a result, MHASP expanded its focus to include consumers of mental health services living in the community.

Since the early 1980s, MHASP has also been involved in trying to push the state to close state hospitals. At the same time, it has been committed to reshaping the mental health system, which all too often closes institutions only to drop people into communities without any support services.

In 1987, the Association played a leading role in forcing the state to close Philadelphia State Hospital (Byberry); in 1998 it played a similar role in the closing of Haverford State Hospital. In both instances, MHASP successfully advocated for the state to return the millions of dollars used to run the hospitals to the community to fund support programs.

In the mid-1980s, MHASP began to develop programs staffed and often run by consumers of mental health services. These programs were intended to provide consumers with the opportunity to learn how to care and advocate for themselves.

Today, MHASP is by far the largest of the 340 affiliates of the National Mental Health Association. It employs more than 280 people who work in more than 30 different programs, consumer centers and advocacy projects throughout Philadelphia and its four suburban counties (Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery) in Pennsylvania.

Many MHASP employees are themselves consumers of mental health services and have been through the programs that now employ them.

MHASP receives funding from the federal government, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the city of Philadelphia, various county governments, United Way, foundations and private contributors.