“hey closed the mental asylums because they needed money....”
A book called “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was published in 1962.
“The novel constantly refers to different authorities that control individuals through subtle and coercive methods. The novel’s narrator, the Chief, combines these authorities in his mind, calling them “The Combine” in reference to the mechanistic way they manipulate and process individuals. The authority of The Combine is most often personified in the character of Nurse Ratched who controls the inhabitants of the novel’s mental ward through a combination of rewards and subtle shame. Although she does not normally resort to conventionally harsh discipline....”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Flew_Over_the_Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(novel)
“Leon Eisenberg lists three key factors that led to deinstitutionalisation gaining support. The first factor was a series of socio-political campaigns for the better treatment of patients. Some of these were spurred on by institutional abuse scandals in the 1960s and 1970s, such as Willowbrook State School in the United States and Ely Hospital in the United Kingdom. The second factor was new psychiatric medications made it more feasible to release people into the community and the third factor was financial imperatives. There was an argument that community services would be cheaper.Mental health professionals, public officials, families, advocacy groups, public citizens, and unions held differing views on deinstitutionalisation.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
This reads like a Bee headline, lol.
There were better and a greater variety of medications introduced to help patients cope. Not mentioned concurrently was that many many patients would and did refuse to take this medication after being released into polite society. I commute into a large city to work and routinely witness mentally ill, drug and alcohol addicted homeless people living under overpasses, in cardboard boxes, down by the river, etc. It is indeed tragic and dangerous to the rest of us who are relatively normal. What it is not is compassionate or logical as an approach to treating such people and it has failed as a national policy.