Several unintended consequences of the legislation came about due to the changes in administration. More specifically, after President Nixon was elected into office, the political climate surrounding metal heath centers changed. Essentially Nixon's attitude toward the community mental health center was non-supportive. He thought that the idea of community or social service was born of the leftist conspiracy. Both Nixon and Ford administrations withheld funds provided by congress for community mental health. An example of this is in 1974, Nixon vetoed efforts to extend the community mental health centers program (Bloom, 1984).

Unforeseen social consequences that followed the legislation greatly impacted the future of mental health. First, there were budgetary concerns involving the public agencies that were billing other public funding sources such as Medicaid. Other problems included poor patient monitoring and confidentiality of information. Reporting program effectiveness and program evaluation was not in place which created reluctance on the part of the government to allot funds (Bloom, 1977). In addition, severely mentally ill people were being let out into the street which is inherently a bad situation if the proper services are not in place (Bloom, 1977).

As the years passed after the Community Mental Health Centers legislation, more problems arose. Staffing patterns changed wherein more people holding master's degrees were applying for jobs. Between 1972 to 1976 there was an increase in the quantity of full-time positions in the field of mental health by 13 percent (Rieman, 1982). The lack of continuity and coordination among state hospitals and community mental health centers created problems for patients. More specifically, there existed the "reject syndrome" which was described as "a phenomenon in which service-providing agencies and families find it unpalatable or undesirable or unacceptable to expend the energy the mentally disabled desire. As a result, each finds a rationalization for trying to reject the giving of attention in the hope that some other organization or entity will assume the responsibility" (Gruenberug, p. 282, 1982).

Other unintended consequences included that there were no guidelines that included or mandated a coordination of services or communication between the hospital and the community mental health centers. An example of this downfall was that community mental health centers were not informed of patients being released from the hospital. Patients needed rehabilitation counseling and medication (Mental Health Net, 1999).