We seem to have come full circle. One of the big reasons for the enormous homeless population, is because all the mental hospitals were closed, in the 1980s and 90s.
I think that news stories about [very real] abuses in these hospitals, along with the cost to maintain, were responsible.
You can yell "Get a job!" at schizophrenics, all you want, but it won't make them employable, or even able to live on their own.
There are a number of mental illnesses that can be treated, and recovery is possible, but that only accounts for a fairly small percentage of the severely mentally ill. I know a large number of folks that have done it, but for every one of them, there's a hundred more, that couldn't get it.
It's just that treating mental illness is hugely unpopular with the vast majority of folks that don't have any family or associates with mental illness, and even more unpopular with folks that have undiagnosed mental illness (It's quite possible to have a long, productive life, with some forms of mental illness -it can even be helpful, in some careers).
Strange how those patients ended up primarily in jails and prisons, and the street, where they received no treatment, and homelessness and mental health issues got much worse.
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/commentary/stor...
We can agree that the results were worse but you can't pretend that the abuse was made up by Republicans.
Reagan repealed the Mental Health Systems Act (the result of a commission under Carter) as part of his "small government" mantra.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1...
Reagan was elected as a conservative backlash to Carter's progressive policies. We're talking about someone so petty he ripped functioning solar panels off the roof of the White House.
They leaked water, something you do not want happening in a historical property.
Reagan made a lot of terrible choices, removing leaky containers from one one of our nation's most iconic historic buildings is not among them.
A lot of the abuses were IMHO caused by underfunding.
Eugenics by free market.
That hit harder than I expected, for someone whose loved ones were crippled by primarily schizophrenia. Even two generations back, such people would be cared by family or community, but now they have practically no one. The system is working as intended, it seems.
Sad.
The worst that ever happened to non-violent me was being poisoned with a painful, nauseating antipsychotic. That caused me to be more depressed and the psych wards are boring in america compared to countries that have computers or at least FM radios. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ufnii4xlirvvnhlwegorf/quackLa...