Liberals, Deinstitutionalisation and Jared Lee Loughner

4yourcountry.com ^ | 1/11/2011 | Jim Country

[CriticalThinking]

Singular policies driven by "do good" liberals and the federal government put focus on limited bad acts. Kesey wrote a story based on his LSD induced observations in one VA mental hospital. Once his story was put into film, his small example failsly characterized the bulk of mental health care as dehumanizing and made it impossible to force the Laughners of the world to get treatment.

[Brilliant]

They need to introduce a bill to make it easier to Baker Act these guys.

[GeronL]

I think I remember something about a reporter named Jerry Rivers doing an expose that got most asylums shut down....

[IrishCatholic]

guess where the homeless came from bookmark.

[scooby321]

This may be a Liberal nightmare.

The Sheriff may have covered for fellow union county employee's relative on death threats.

Then come out and change the subject like this idiot sheriff doesn't think he will be sued civilly.

[hinckley buzzard]

Wyatt vs Stickney filed in 1970 led to a ruling that mental patients were entitled either to a reasonable standard of care and treatment or else be released. Most state hospitals at the time could not afford to meet those standards and a second great wave fo deinstitutionalization began.

The first wave occurred under Kennedy whose 1963 Community Mental Health Act envisioned that treatment would be picked up on an outpatient basis by community mental health centers. Congress never allocated enough funds, and states couldn't afford them, so while a few cmhc's were established, most patients never got the promised treatment. Welcome to the New Frontier.

Ironically perhaps one of the nation's best state-hospital/cmhc systems was created and flourished in Tucson AZ in the sixties and seventies. I trained there in the early seventies.

[Snapping Turtle]

These institutions were closed because the ACLU pushed for closure, based on inadequate and substandard care. Imagine, if we decided to close all nursing homes because some homes had inadequate and substandard care and just threw the old folks out on the street to fend for themselves?!

[histrohistro]

And part of tort reform, so over due, needs to be that clowns that do so are held personally responsible not the tax payers of the community.

[Roccus]

IMO, both JFK and Eunice were guilt ridden over the family’s treatment of their sister, Rose Marie.

[REPANDPROUDOFIT]

Did Loughner work? Where did he get money? I know he lived with his parents. Did he have a source for his own income (work, welfare, government stipend) or was he dependent on his parents - “getting an allowance”? Who paid for his classes at the community college?