Posted on 07/20/2011 4:55:43 PM PDT by Jean2
Can anyone tell me who was responsible for the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill? I have heard various people claim it was done by Jerry Brown and otehrs say it was Ronald Reagan.
I have heard that it was the ACLU through a series of law suits.
President Bill Clinton signed the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996
In 1971 Wyatt v Stickney was filed, which involved the federal courts. The basic premise, which was correct, was that if you involuntarily confine someone because of illness you have a duty to treat that illness. You can't just say "you have broken no law but we think you're crazy so we will sock you away and throw away the key."
Custodial treatment is not good enough to justify depriving a person of his civil liberties. If he is not dangerous you let him go. The mental hospitals as late as the fifties had no really effective treatment, so were required to discharge masses of people.
Before copping an attitude about deinstitutionalization consider this: in the 1950's, half of all hospital beds in the US were psychiatric beds. Nowadays we have some fullsize hospitals with NO psychiatric beds, or maybe a twenty bed ward if they are big enough. State psychiatric hospitals are largely for the forensic cases--legally insane or incompetent to stand trial.
The bulk of the difference has been the introduction of effective psychoactive medications and respect for the civil rights they enable.
Thank you for letting me know. I was a baby then so I was completely unaware but I did remember the Geraldo report in the 70’s. It was so horrifying that I can still remember some of the scenes. I can’t imagine anything worse but I will take your word on it. These are the people who really needed a safety net and never got one.
From all the above posts, it sounds like there’s no simple answer.
An organization I support ministers to mentally ill homeless people. They have a daunting task even though they’re in a medium-sized city. Right now, finding housing for the people they can get off the streets is a big issue. A large downtown apartment building is closing, displacing 200+ people.
Prison is now the de facto mental health center for those with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. There is no treatment, only hell waiting to explode.
Reagan, but it was a movement that has always had bipartisan support. It`s one of the very few issues with support from both sides. It was a movement that started almost a century ago, there`s a lot to read on it, but since you mention RWR and Brown I am guessing you`re asking about CA specifically. I think Reagan was governor, but I wouldn`t be surprised if Moonbeam supported it too.
I know something about this. Reponsibility for the care of the mentally ill was passed to the states after the development of some effective psycho-drugs in the 60’s. To save a buck, the states opted to take the low-cost approach and prescribe drugs instead of housing them any longer. Many of the mentally ill ended up on the streets to fend for themselves. I remember reading a newspaper account of what happened exactly and this is as much of it that I recall. We had a mental hospital in Camarillo, CA that closed down in the early 70’s as a direct result of this reorganization.
Yep, this one goes to RR. (I'm not sure why I remember this so clearly.)
The best solution is organisations like you are involved with.
As has been indicated though, the bulk of the mentally ill are treated and succesfully re enter society.
Various political agendas have a stake in making mental health advances seem a failure. Note how many attempted to claim hoards of mentally ill in the streets was a problem emerging in the twentieth century. Read up on the traumatized veterans of the civil war (or indeed any war of the past). Ask just how all those institutions came to be built, and what was done before.
I read a good book about five years ago(don’t remember the name) and it pointed out that after the movie “one flew over the coocoo’s nest” came out the democrats, headed by teddy kennedy fought to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill. turned them loose on the public and then of course crime sky rocketed.
That is what I remember-the 1970’s.
Conventional wisdom is of course that Palin is responsible for the murders in Arizona. More comes out every day that Loughner exhibit traits of schizophrenia. If so, it would have been nice if the combination of educators, parents, friends, and officials could have taken some steps to place Loughner under proper care (you know so Palin could not get to him with her mind control), but it actually very hard to force people with severe mental diseases to be treated because of a range of reforms pushed by progressives starting in the 60’s: http://www.4yourcountry.org/2011/01/are-liberal-policies-responsible-for-jared-lee-loughner.html
We talked about this in a thread yesterday, so forgive the repeat.
In California’s case, Governor Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act in 1967. It required a judge’s order to force medication and for hospital holds longer than 72 hours.
With so many patients subsequently released, California’s hospitals were defunded and shut down.
My own opinion (not that you asked) is that the number of mentally ill abandoned to wander the streets, with no help available even if they could ask for it, is the shame of California.
I don’t know about the situation in the rest of the country.
Here in MA it was under the Duke.
That was a national phenomenon, something bigger than any one state governor. There was a national movement for deinstitutionalization on the state level and the Carter administration got national legislation supporting and advancing the movement. There was very little thought as to what would replace the old mental hospitals that were being closed all across the country. Reagan’s role in all this wouldn’t have been a determining factor, but it’s easy for liberals to blame him.
The democraps in congress forced Reagan to- they needed the voters
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