A liberal-created failure that goes entirely ignored is the left's harmful agenda for society's most vulnerable people -- the mentally ill. Eastern State Hospital, built in 1773 in Williamsburg, Virginia, was the first public hospital in America for the care and treatment of the mentally ill. Many more followed. Much of the motivation to build more mental institutions was to provide a remedy for the maltreatment of mentally ill people in our prisons. According to professor William Gronfein at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, by 1955 there were nearly 560,000 patients housed in state mental institutions across the nation. By 1977, the population of mental institutions had dropped to about 160,000 patients.

Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting. According to a 2013 Wall Street Journal article by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey, founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center, titled "Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill", shutting down mental hospitals didn't turn out the way advocates promised. Several studies summarized by the Treatment Advocacy Center show that untreated mentally ill are responsible for 10 percent of homicides (and a higher percentage of the mass killings). They are 20 percent of jail and prison inmates and more than 30 percent of the homeless.

We often encounter these severely mentally ill individuals camped out in libraries, parks, hospital emergency rooms and train stations and sleeping in cardboard boxes. They annoy passers-by with their sometimes intimidating panhandling. The disgusting quality of life of many of the mentally ill makes a mockery of the lofty predictions made by the advocates of shutting down mental institutions and transferring their function to community mental health centers, or CMHCs. Torrey writes: "The evidence is overwhelming that this federal experiment has failed, as seen most recently in the mass shootings by mentally ill individuals in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Tucson, Ariz. It is time for the federal government to get out of this business and return the responsibility, and funds, to the states."

Getting the federal government out of the mental health business may be easier said than done. A 1999 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the case of Olmstead v. L.C. held that under the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals with mental disabilities have the right to live in an integrated community setting rather than in institutions. The U.S. Department of Justice defined an integrated setting as one "that enables individuals with disabilities to interact with non-disabled persons to the fullest extent possible." Though some mentally ill people may have benefited from this ruling, many others were harmed -- not to mention the public, which must put up with the behavior of the mentally ill.

Torrey says it has now become politically correct to claim that this federal program failed because not enough centers were funded and not enough money was spent. But that's not true. Torrey says: "Altogether, the annual total public funds for the support and treatment of mentally ill individuals is now more than $140 billion. The equivalent expenditure in 1963 when President John F. Kennedy proposed the CMHC program was $1 billion, or about $10 billion in today's dollars. Even allowing for the increase in U.S. population, what we are getting for this 14-fold increase in spending is a disgrace."

The dollar cost of this liberal vision of deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people is a relatively small part of the burden placed on society. Many innocent people have been assaulted, robbed and murdered by mentally ill people. Businesspeople and their customers have had to cope with the nuisance created by the mentally ill. The police response to misbehavior and crime committed by the mentally ill is to arrest them. Thus, they are put in jeopardy of mistreatment by hardened criminals in the nation's jails and prisons. Worst of all is the fact that the liberals who engineered the shutting down of mental institutions have never been held accountable for their folly.

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Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting.

The Left would have us believe it all started with the Reagan administration slashing mental health care funding, compelling institutions to dump patients in the general populace.

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Worst of all is the fact that the liberals who engineered the shutting down of mental institutions have never been held accountable for their folly.

Leftists never are held to account.

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Originally posted by Fenris:

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Worst of all is the fact that the liberals who engineered the shutting down of mental institutions have never been held accountable for their folly.

Leftists never are held to account.

I would have liked to see Williams cite (some of) the specific liberal policies and/or legislation, along with naming their liberal sponsor's, that led to the failure of effectively and responsibly managing the mentally ill.
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Florida was downsizing or closing most of its hospitals during my time as a Public Defender. On of the gravest mistakes ever. Not that the hospitals were that good, but better than the current options.

One trick the staff down here would use for a problem patient was to give them matches, they would then set something on fire, staff would call the cops and the patient would be arrested for arson.

In 1994 (or 95?) I had a client ordered to the psyc hospital, HRS (DCF now) did nothing and the guy just sat in jail, so I filed a motion to hold the agency in contempt of court. One of my prouder moments!

in a way the Gov't is still in the business,

the mentally ill folks that are in 'half way' houses get funded thru the patients welfare and snap benefits, + whatever they can milk from private insurance,

watched plenty of caretakers shop when I was in the grocery business, with fistfuls of food stamps or EBT cards,
not all that food bought with the patients cards went to the patient,,,,

no way to prove that other than word of mouth from others,

lots of folks running these halfway houses or patient homes (put 4-6 folks in a 4 bedroom house and keep a nurse/CNA with them all day, ) make a killing

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Originally posted by Opus Dei:

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Starting in the 1970s, advocates for closing mental hospitals argued that because of the availability of new psychotropic drugs, people with mental illness could live among the rest of the population in an unrestrained natural setting.

The Left would have us believe it all started with the Reagan administration slashing mental health care funding, compelling institutions to dump patients in the general populace.

That would be because the DEMOCRAT Governor before Reagan was responsible. He sunset the implementation to take place after he left office.

The Governor was Pat Brown - moonbeam's dad.

The left is like rust, they always corrode what they touch and they never stop.

Sounds terrible but warehousing them even against their will is probly the best thing for them and for society. Turning them out on the street is not a good option. I work in downtown San Fransicko and there are homeless and alcoholic/ drug addled bums who look like they could work but are just lazy or fool drunk or high to care. But functional. And then there are the real mental cases wandering around like zombies screaming at space monkeys. Of course they have rights and can’t be locked up against their will I suppose. But for their safety they probably should be

For our safety as well.

This is a great article. I have been saying for years that the closing of mental institutions was the beginning of the stupidity we now live with daily. Folks believing that they are what they aren't and trying to convince others that we are the ones fucked in the head! It's a shame that we've reduced ourselves to letting the inmates run the asylums.