This is what can happen as a result of closing mental institutions. In the NY area, most of the larger mental institutions were downsized and many of the patients allowed to go freely about. They have not only ended up homeless, sickly, or drug and alcohol addled, but some are violent and irrational and are apt to do awful things like what happened in Westbury. It is time to reevaluate the mental health system and make immediate changes.
Agreed. I worked with a private charity in NYC that dealt with many mentally ill persons at that time. The Upstate mental hospitals were not only improving but some of them had excellent programs.
Then came the weird budget cuts, where they dumped care for the genuinely helpless and gave it to the genuinely lazy, including civil servants.
Our people went from decent treatment on beautiful campuses to unheated garages run by unscrupulous old ladies as “half way houses” to full blown “community mental health care” - meaning living in a doorway or on a subway platform.
Giuliani got a lot of these people out of the subways and public spaces simply by making it unpleasant to live there and forcing them further away, but to this day nobody has dealt with the mental health issues.
Remember Willowbrook?
Geraldo first burst on the national scene with his Willowbrook espose. People were horrified at the conditions. One result- asylums were closed and the mentally ill turned out on the street to be homeless among us.