We need to start advocating for such hospitals to be reopened. It might help prevent tragedies like CT. Won’t stop them all of course, but anything is better than what we have now.
I agree, and a public policy of “free range” mentally ill people is dangerous and cruel for them and dangerous and cruel for many who come in contact with them. But this started with Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act of 1963, and since it’s taken 50 years to create the current mess, it’s going to take a while to fix it. If it ever gets fixed. Probably not in my lifetime.