This. I blame the ACLU and their bleeding heart soros paid fairies.
If i may, this comes up often, and it seems the lesson still needs to be repeated.
The problems started in the 1950s and before. Conditions in asylums/mental institutions were so horrid, and funding was so inadequate, most of them devolved into houses of horror, where mistreatment, use of lobotomies and shock treatments, and unsanitary living conditions became the norm. i imagine trying to control a hospital full of noncompliant, violent and disconnected patients is a lot like herding cats, and getting good workers who could handle the conditions was next to impossible.
President Kennedy, motivated by his own daughter's special needs (Rosemary), decided to stop trying to control institutions at the federal level. instead of funding these federal facilities, he wanted to provide grants to the states so they could build new and improved community-based mental health centers. The federal government would provide up to 75% of the funding in early months, but then turn over the funding to the state and private enterprises. It was a major shift in federal policy, away from institutional-based care and to more out-patient and alternative treatments.
That was the beginning of deinstitutionalizing more and more people with mental health problems. By 1980, the number of patients at public psychiatric hospitals had declined by 75% and by 2000 only 55,000 remained. The numbers continued to drop, and by 2009 the institutionalized population was just 2% of what it was in 1963.
Only half of the proposed centers were ever built; none was fully funded, and the act didn't provide money to operate them long-term. I guess the idea was the money previously spent by law enforcement, prisons and regular hospitals would somehow be redirected to the new mental health facilities. Some states closed expensive state hospitals, but never spent money to establish community-based care.
Deinstitutionalization accelerated after the adoption of Medicaid in 1965Once Reagan saw this as a waste of federal funds -- gifting the money to states and at the same time housing fewer and fewer people -- he pulled the plug on the whole grant program. During the Reagan administration, the remaining funding for the act was converted into a mental-health block grants for states. Since the CMHA was enacted, 90 percent of beds have been cut at state hospitals, but they have not been replaced by community resources.
Where do the majority of the retarded and mentally ill wind up now? As homeless living on the streets where they get no treatment, and/or prisons where they might get a bare minimum of treatment if properly diagnosed. Once they are released from prison, the meds are no longer administered regularly, and the cycle begins again.
It was a long and winding road, but i think Medicaid -- healthcare for the poor -- became the escape hatch for the states to wash their hands of the mentally ill and place them on the Medicaid roles where they can see a doctor, get some meds, and live wherever they can find a place. Of course, that doesn't mean a mentally ill person is going to make, let alone keep, appointments or remember to pick up a prescription refill without assistance.