Hi, I'm happy to talk about this.

With this one, it helps to be familiar with the history behind it, though that's not strictly necessary.

In 1963, Congress approved the Community Mental Health Centers Act, which outlined plans to release the mentally ill from institutions, incorporate these individuals into their communities, and provide outpatient treatment. Leading associations of mental health professionals overwhelmingly applauded these goals and approved of these plans because, the experts said, the treatment rather than the institutional environment was the crucial element for the welfare of these patients. Within twenty years, state authorities succeeded in discharging 95% of these patients from institutional care. In 1983, however, executives from these same professional associations said that the plight of the mentally ill was worse than ever.
Which if the following, if true, best resolves the paradox in the above passage?

Discharging them is a great idea, IF they get the outpatient treatment, which could help them more than remaining locked in an institution. So, if the treatment could help them so much, why weren't they helped?

A) More people were diagnosed with psychiatric disorders in 1983 than in 1963.

The passage is about a mass of patients, who had be diagnosed and locked in institutions over the course of years, perhaps decades. It's not just about the folks diagnosed in a single calendar year.

B) Many mental health professionals believe that if their peers had administered the project rather than the state authorities, the results would have been better.

The question is: why didn't the outpatient treatment help these patients as expected --- that part would have been administered by mental health professionals, so this statement is somewhat beside the point.

C) The state budget allocation for services to the mentally ill has not increased faster than the rate of inflation.

OK, this is getting there . . maybe the money for the programs wasn't keeping up with inflation, so the dollars allocated didn't go as far as they should have. Not bad.

D) Congress agreed to fund these outpatient services, provided that the money come from cuts in other domestic programs; these cuts, however, never materialized.

In other words, they never came up with the money, so the patients never got the outpatient treatments that theoretically would have been helpful to them. Bingo! That would precisely explain why, 20 years later, the mental ill folks were worse off than ever --- they had been kicked out of their state-sponsored institutions, given no help with services, and left to fend for themselves. Historically, this is exactly what happened in California, when then-Governor Reagan signed the bill to close all those state-run institutions, a huge budget cut, and while all kinds of outpatient care were promised, in practice not a dime was allocated toward them. The vast majority of the mentally ill became homeless, and are still so today, thanks to those decisions now almost half-a-century old.

E) Many of the released patients had, at some time, been addicted to illegal narcotics.

An aggravating factor, to be sure, but it doesn't explain the wholesale failure of the promised and promising outpatient treatments.

The best resolution of the paradox is what, in real history, actually happened. The outpatient services, however potentially beneficial, didn't help these released mentally ill folks because they never received those services. Super-helpful treatment programs were promised in political grandstanding, but never supported with any money, and the homeless, kicked of the state-run institutions, were left on the street with no care.

Best answer = D

BTW, here's a blog article I wrote about paradox questions:
http://magoosh.com/gmat/2012/gmat-cr-paradox-questions/

Here's another paradox question for practice.
http://gmat.magoosh.com/questions/1320
When you submit your answer, the next page will have a complete video explanation.

Does all this make sense? Let me know if you have any questions.

Mike
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Mike McGarry
Magoosh Test Prep

Hi Mike,

But the passage doesn't say that the funds were responsible to help the needy when they were at the institution. In fact it doesn't talk about the funds.
However, it was the environment that discomforted those people.
Doesn't E say that the unexpected addiction to illegal drugs exacerbated the environment of those who were released??
Or is it probably even if "many" got addicted, the situation wouldn't be worse than it was before... So, D is a bit more universal in terms the lack of treatment to the whole lot??