Why should the state take responsibility and pay for it, to boot?!
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Prior to states taking responsibility for the mentally ill and building the big state mental health facilities, families locked the mentally ill in rooms, icehouses, or attics. Neighbors and family killed the mentally ill and they were often executed
State facilities were seen as compassion in helping families by caring for the mentally and severely developmentally delayed. They got three hots and a cot.
The problem there ... with our US Constitution is that one cannot have their freedoms taken away without due process ... and being locked up in a mental facility is very much as much a prison as a “prison” is. There is a VERY HIGH STANDARD per the U.S. Constitution before the government takes away freedoms and rights! We MUST maintain that and never turn into the (former) Soviet Union in which they USED “mental illness” as a convenient way to get rid of people!
State facilities were seen as compassion in helping families by caring for the mentally and severely developmentally delayed. They got three hots and a cot.
About 30 years ago I worked in a county contracted nursing home which formerly was a county poor farm and also had a building used in the early 1900's for the criminally insane. I don't mean typical mental illness I mean ones who had to be shackled. The building was closed maybe in the late 1940's early 1950's. It took the patients that the state mental hospital before that time was not equipped to handle and could not offer enough security to house them. When the state mental hospital upgraded to handle security concerns that building I saw was then closed.
The state had a nearby mental hospital opened in the late 1890's that took in the regional mental patients and had a good record for both permanent and in and out treatment. Familes could take family members there and get them help no red tape involved. The objective was treatment at the level of care needed.
In the 1970's that changed. The do gooders eventually got it closed by the late 1990's. Within literally months after the processing of freedom began in the 1970's so did the homeless issues and the crime involved.
Reading some post some posters do not understand the families can't just wave a wand and say you are getting help even to a minor. Family can not force someone to take their medications. The very laws that opened up the mental hospital doors to let patients go free now prevent the families from taking action.
So who is now the mental health care providers? COPS, Untrained or incapable both monetary and skills wise families, homeless shelters, COPS, you get the idea.
Some, a very small minority of those incapable of ever caring for themselves ended up t the facility I worked at. About 50 actually and they weren't a threat to others. The rest? Homeless, possibly living with family with COPS showing up all the time and ending up Suicide By Cops sometimes, and Jail. Jail has become the new Mental hospital. The same ones bitching that state should not be involved will cry Police Brutality when one of their enlightened citizens points a weapon at a COP.
A person can be for smaller limited government and still have enough Common Sense to realize some things are just too much for families to handle due to skills needed. But it's more fun to preach blame the family.
If it happens to one of theirs they'll knock family members down trying to get away far enough from taking responsibility themselves because they are Free and no one is going to obligate them /semi sarcasm. But seen a lot of it before.