[central_va]

This is from a leftist rag but worth considering:

Did Reagan’s Crazy Mental Health Policies Cause Today’s Homelessness?

Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.

He made similar decisions while he was the governor of California, releasing more than half of the state’s mental hospital patients and passing a law that abolished involuntary hospitalization of people struggling with mental illness. This started a national trend of de-institutionalization.

In other words, if you are struggling with mental illness, we can only help you if you ask for it.

But, wait. Isn’t one of the characteristics of severe mental illness not having an accurate sense of reality? Doesn’t that mean a person may not even realize he or she is mentally ill?

[nopardons]

It had NOTHING at all to do with Reagan and the shutting down of insane asylums, began in many different states, long before Reagan was president!

In NYC and then in N.Y. state, this happened in the late '70s.

[hinckley buzzard]

The de-institutionalization movement began in response to a federal district court decision, Wyatt v Stickney in 1971, which held that if a mentally ill person is held involuntarily in a mental hospital, he has a constitutional right to effective treatment, with the goal of returning him to the community.

In 1971 many patients were committed against their will, without any semblance of due process, given custodial care only, with no definable release date. Mental patients, in other words, were denied rights commonly given to criminals upon incarceration.

The Court correctly ruled this was an unconstitutional denial of their rights, and it was upheld by the circuit court.

States were strapped for funds and, unable to provide the standards of treatment required, began to release patients into the community. At this time the Community Mental Health Center system was operating, to a degree, and was expected to pick up the treatment of patients as outpatients. It had been initiated under Kennedy and was federally funded, but was never fully or adequately staffed up in most cases.

Reagan turned the program over to the states, which were the appropriate governmental entity to take the responsibility, but the states were no more interested in providing treatment in 1980 than they were in 1970.

As governor, Reagan did only what was required under the ruling of the courts. Involuntary commitments continued but required due process, not merely a doctor's order. The law is pretty clear, being mentally ill does not deprive one of his rights except through a legal process of establishing incompetence, and the provision of a guardian.

Reagan had nothing to do with any of these decisions, he only carried out the law, as he should have.