It happened under Reagan but it was pushed by mental health activists who wanted the stigma removed from mental illness and mentally ill people to be mainstreamed back into society.
In other words the libs set the agenda, got what they wanted then blamed Reagan, same old same old.
I am perfectly serious, all this time I thought, oh I dunno, not sure how, but I really thought Reagan put the mentals on the street.
And if, as asserted upthread, it was somehow influenced by One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Next, I’d certainly understand it.
Again, recalling, at that time, that I was a liberal and believed anything. With the caveat that there was NO Internet, Blogs and much beyond ABCCBSNBC to present the “truth”.
Again, again, I really believed THE UGLY AMERICAN and SILENT SPRING cause it never occurred to me that someone would write a book full of lies.
Surely “somebody” was checking on such things. And Dan Rather, hey, he’d never lie to us, would he?