Posted by Noa on January 8, 2000, at 15:23:37
In reply to Re: Thanks Noa, I guess my post was a mistake. Jamie, posted by jamie on January 8, 2000, at 13:20:05
Funny how it was the Democrats just a decade ago screaming that the mentally ill should have the freedom to be let out of the institutions. And they succeeded in getting that done. Now they're screaming we have too many mentally ill homeless on the streets with nowhere to go. Well, duhhhhhh. You could see that coming a million miles away.
It wasn't deinstitutionalization that led to so many homeless mentally ill people. The plan was to have a solid community mental health system, clinics and residences, in place, to support people in their communities (as I said earlier, one proponent of this plan was Rosalyn Carter). This system was being built and heading in a good direction, until the Reagan era, during which time, and this has continued to this day, the funding for these programs has been cut drastically so that it is clearly not feasible to address the needs of these members of the community. Read No Where To Go by E. Fuller Torrey, a psychiatrist who is a staunch advocate for people with mental illness and who has specialized in schizophrenia.
poster:Noa
thread:18345
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000101/msgs/18400.html