This is a long, but incredibly, worthwhile read from a close, personal friend of 50 +/- years. As a longtime member of the Houston Police Department, in various capacities, she has valuable insight to the event this past week in Florida that I, & most people, aren’t aware of. I urge you to take the time to understand one of the contributing factors, not just to last week, but an ongoing “plague” in our great country. Thank you!
-quote-
If you have walked a police beat… you will understand my view… If you have received a phone call from a friend needing help for a mentally ill family member…. You will understand my view. If you over the years have changed your mind to not get involved in situations for fear of being hurt or killed… you will understand my view. If you are tired of seeing homeless people on the street… You will understand my view.
Good luck if you need a place to put a family member in need of psychiatric care unless you are a millionaire several times over. In the past fifteen years we have built more prisons than places to care for our mentally ill. This is a crime in itself.
Being in need of treatment is no longer enough. Because the mentally ill must now pose a threat to themselves or others — rather than simply requiring care — we must often wait for them to act on a threat before removing them from harm.
Changing the cost structures of mental health facilities from state to federal budgets created this present chaos. It began in 1972 and was called Deinstitutionalization.
Deinstitutionalization is the policy and practice of transferring homeless, involuntarily hospitalized mental patients from state mental hospitals into many different kinds of psychiatric institutions funded largely by the federal government.
When this occurred… the police departments were tasked with dealing with of all those who were let out of care and management facilities as well as all of the people who have nowhere to go but the streets. There is virtually no place to administer psychotropic drugs or places to manage psychotic episodes.
For 50 years now, the United States has pursued a policy toward the mentally ill that has left the sick untreated and our country unsafe.
Heinous episodes suggest a correlation between violent crimes and “deinstitutionalization,” the policy of closing state mental institutions. Of course, only a small fraction of the mentally ill commit violent crimes. Violence on a mass scale requires planning, which is why such horrific acts committed by the mentally ill are rare. But they are far from unknown as of late. The person is unknown because they have not been entered into the system…. There isn’t a system.
The plan was set in motion by the Community Mental Health Act as a part of John F. Kennedy's legislation and passed by the U.S. Congress in 1963. It is not working.
The costs have been far too high. This is true both for the mentally ill who have been left untreated and for the public that must endure their random acts of violence.
When not sleeping on the streets, many are again consigned to drift among a custodial system of prisons, welfare hotels and outpatient facilities.
Early 19th century, state legislatures got it right: They dedicated significant funds to the construction of palatial estates, designed by the era’s best architects, for the sole purpose of caring for the mentally ill through a method known as “the moral treatment.”
While there surely were some abuses, these institutions not only prevented the severely ill from harming others, they also provided them with a calming refuge — true “asylum” — from the gutters, jails and slum houses that were until then the default custodians of society’s “lunatics.”
Over the last half-century, big government rallied against these institutions and succeeded in seeing to their demise.
At midcentury, when these institutions were overcrowded, such criticism might have been justified, but the results today are far worse.
Since the 1960s, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, more than 90% of mental patients have been discharged from state care to live in ordinary society. In 1955, there were nearly 600,000 mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals. Fifty-five years on, only 43,000 state psychiatric beds remain available for use.
Without proper care and separation from society, a percentage of the severely mentally ill now pose a serious danger to the public.
No one wants their parent or child in a facility, whether it is assisted living or a mental institution... but when needed it should be there for us and it should be a place of safety and quality care for them.
-unquote-
If you have walked a police beat… you will understand my view… If you have received a phone call from a friend needing help for a mentally ill family member…. You will understand my view. If you over the years have changed your mind to not get involved in situations for fear of being hurt or killed… you will understand my view. If you are tired of seeing homeless people on the street… You will understand my view.
Good luck if you need a place to put a family member in need of psychiatric care unless you are a millionaire several times over. In the past fifteen years we have built more prisons than places to care for our mentally ill. This is a crime in itself.
Being in need of treatment is no longer enough. Because the mentally ill must now pose a threat to themselves or others — rather than simply requiring care — we must often wait for them to act on a threat before removing them from harm.
Changing the cost structures of mental health facilities from state to federal budgets created this present chaos. It began in 1972 and was called Deinstitutionalization.
Deinstitutionalization is the policy and practice of transferring homeless, involuntarily hospitalized mental patients from state mental hospitals into many different kinds of psychiatric institutions funded largely by the federal government.
When this occurred… the police departments were tasked with dealing with of all those who were let out of care and management facilities as well as all of the people who have nowhere to go but the streets. There is virtually no place to administer psychotropic drugs or places to manage psychotic episodes.
For 50 years now, the United States has pursued a policy toward the mentally ill that has left the sick untreated and our country unsafe.
Heinous episodes suggest a correlation between violent crimes and “deinstitutionalization,” the policy of closing state mental institutions. Of course, only a small fraction of the mentally ill commit violent crimes. Violence on a mass scale requires planning, which is why such horrific acts committed by the mentally ill are rare. But they are far from unknown as of late. The person is unknown because they have not been entered into the system…. There isn’t a system.
The plan was set in motion by the Community Mental Health Act as a part of John F. Kennedy's legislation and passed by the U.S. Congress in 1963. It is not working.
The costs have been far too high. This is true both for the mentally ill who have been left untreated and for the public that must endure their random acts of violence.
When not sleeping on the streets, many are again consigned to drift among a custodial system of prisons, welfare hotels and outpatient facilities.
Early 19th century, state legislatures got it right: They dedicated significant funds to the construction of palatial estates, designed by the era’s best architects, for the sole purpose of caring for the mentally ill through a method known as “the moral treatment.”
While there surely were some abuses, these institutions not only prevented the severely ill from harming others, they also provided them with a calming refuge — true “asylum” — from the gutters, jails and slum houses that were until then the default custodians of society’s “lunatics.”
Over the last half-century, big government rallied against these institutions and succeeded in seeing to their demise.
At midcentury, when these institutions were overcrowded, such criticism might have been justified, but the results today are far worse.
Since the 1960s, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center, more than 90% of mental patients have been discharged from state care to live in ordinary society. In 1955, there were nearly 600,000 mentally ill patients in state psychiatric hospitals. Fifty-five years on, only 43,000 state psychiatric beds remain available for use.
Without proper care and separation from society, a percentage of the severely mentally ill now pose a serious danger to the public.
No one wants their parent or child in a facility, whether it is assisted living or a mental institution... but when needed it should be there for us and it should be a place of safety and quality care for them.
-unquote-
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