Was closing down all of The State Asylums the biggest mistake The United States made?

The ACLU didn't like the asylums. Who are 𝑦𝑜𝑢 to argue.

It was NOT a NUTHOUSE!

One of the biggest at least.

Danvers is a good name for a mental hospital.

Yes and no. Yes, because we have a lot of mentally ill people roaming around unwilling to get help, and no because many of these places abused the patients. It’s a question of individual rights.

The old Danvers mental hospital is luxury apartments now.

R1 Reagan was the driving force nehind the closers, not the ACLU.

R6

Yes, and no.

Majority of old Danvers State School campus was demolished to make way for multi-family housing. Very little remains of former historic buildings.

Shutting down of state hospitals (deinstitutionalization) was not in of itself a bad thing. Problem was and still is neither federal nor state/local governments have ponied up anywhere near funding required for second part of keeping people out of mental wards; funds for supportive housing, meds, access to mental healthcare, etc...

Best federal government managed was to put mentally ill on Medicaid, which left them ripe for abuses from a different flank.

,,,,,,

Also just so you know OP, it wasn't just state and or federal government pushing to shut state hospitals, action also came from courts as those incarcerated in such institutions began fighting back.

Prior to 1960 things were as they had been for centuries, it was quite easy to have someone put away often on most flimsy diagnoses. It only took a willing physician and judge (one or both often on the take) to basically shut someone away for life. There was no appeals process, and once committed people remained for life.

As it relates to this group homosexuals were often put away by their families. Women both young and not were also put away for reasons ranging from refusing to sleep with their fathers, to (supposed) sexual promiscuity. Have money or expecting a legacy? People were put away by their families or others, and once declared "insane" they were stripped of ability to manage and handle their own affairs including property and assets.

I've had the same thoughts op

From The Atlantic:

"Almost a decade later, President John F. Kennedy signed the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Health Centers Construction Act. (It turned out to be the last bill Kennedy would sign.) Under the 1963 law, he said, “custodial mental institutions” would be replaced by community mental-health centers, thus allowing patients to live—and get psychiatric care—in their communities.

In 1965, the creation of Medicaid accelerated the shift from inpatient to outpatient care: One key part of the Medicaid legislation stipulated that the federal government would not pay for inpatient care in psychiatric hospitals. This further pushed states to move patients out of costly state facilities.

In reality, though, few community mental-health centers were built, creating an extreme shortage of mental-health care. Thorazine, initially touted as a miracle drug, soon proved to have serious side effects. More critical was the growing recognition that the treatment of mental illness is complicated: Conditions like bipolar disorder and schizophrenia cannot be “cured” with a simple drug regimen the way an antibiotic can knock out an infection. And Medicaid, now the largest payer of mental-health-care services in the country, has severely limited the number of inpatients that hospitals and other facilities can serve. The dream of community-based care turned out to be largely a failure."

"Only half of the proposed centers were ever built; none were fully funded, and the act didn't provide money to operate them long-term. Some states saw an opportunity to close expensive state hospitals without spending some of the money on community-based care. Deinstitutionalization accelerated after the adoption of Medicaid in 1965. During the Reagan administration, the remaining funding for the act was converted into a mental-health block grant for states. Since the CMHA was enacted, 90 percent of beds have been cut at state hospitals"

More on Ronald Reagan and his shameful legacy regarding mental health issues.

We'll never have state asylums back because it would cost a fortune in tax dollars and Americans won't pay for that

It is my experience that those who can't shut their fucking mouths about the importance of mental health and the science are the same people who are the biggest opponents of psychiatric hospitals because they "violate human rights." Whether you like it or not, places like this are necessary for people who are severely mentally ill and cannot care for themselves.

Having schizophrenic drug addicts live in the elements, pissing and shitting on streets, terrorizing and/or posing physical threats to the public is not a civilized alternative. Yes, these institutions have a history of abuse and neglect, but that doesn't mean they are incapable of operating in a humane way. I don't think that asylums themselves were bad—the issue was that they were not funded or staffed adequately, and the patients suffered.

It is my experience that those who can't shut their fucking mouths about the importance of mental health and the science are the same people who are the biggest opponents of psychiatric hospitals because they "violate human rights."

Like the Salon article that's just a cheap excuse to bash Reagan.

Of all people it was Geraldo Rivera who made this a woke issue. This was how he made the leap from local news to network and a Pulitzer. And he earned both. Patients rights groups piled on. "Humane" people were nearly unanimous on this by the time Reagan later was elected in 1980.

People watch old films like "Three Faces of Eve" or even "Snake Pit" and came away with idea that mental illness can be "cured". When in reality stories of both women those pieces of fiction were based upon was not always smooth sailing.

Let us not glamourize things, inmates at state hospitals often were abused physically and mentally. This even extended to various treatment and or "cures" cooked up by quacks and or administered by uncaring nurses or other staff. Yes, there were good people in these places who genuinely cared, but often they were far out numbered by the bad.

Pregnancies and abortions were often rampant in some institutions. How this kept happening in wards closed to outside male visitors no one wanted to get too involved with solving.

Look familiar? Just like streets or subway system in NYC.

No, people are no longer warehoused, but they aren't receiving proper care either. So they walk around lose on streets talking to people who aren't there, laughing at walls, and in extreme cases turning violent.

The lack of in-patient beds is shameful and appalling. I once convinced an actively suicidal friend to go to the ER after he’d ingested random pills and attempted major self-injury. He waited in the car as I explained to the staff who said they couldn’t help and that none of the other hospitals could either. His acute breakdown would have to wait until business hours as all funding for emergency beds had been cut some years prior.

Luckily for him, his family was involved enough to get him admitted to a private inpatient facility a couple weeks later. That is not the usual outcome. This happened around 2008 and I cannot imagine how dire access to care has become in the years since.

Far as NYC metro area goes nearly all major private healthcare systems have reduced, eliminated or otherwise found ways to cut exposure to mental health patients.

Famed New York Hospital closed Payne Whitney (were Marilyn Monroe once was famously confined), long ago.

Only on data lounge would posters use scenes from an Olivia De Havilland film to make a point about the mental health crisis in the year 2022.

If Marilyn Monroe was treated that badly at Payne Whitney (she was basically felt up by a doctor who insisted she have breast examination, this despite her telling him she had recently undergone one already), imagine what it was like for less famous or whatever persons.

Recent report from NYSNA,

More

I found the magic of a lobotomy the perfect way to deal with unruly children

More from NYC

Open your mind and do some research instead of running your mouth R26

Across United States things did not change much from 1940's through 1970's as that famed expose on Willowbrook State School confirmed.

Other side of things is that it is incredibly difficult to commit anyone today. Hospitals and doctors are even reluctant to sign off on a 5150 - 72 hour involuntary hold, and thus forget about something more permanent.

Now that mentally ill have rights (or rather they are not deprived of same by virtue of their illness alone), there is a fear among healthcare professionals and or facilities that said person, his/her family and or supporters will turn around and sue everything connected with that involuntary confinement.

So any sort of 72 hour hold has to be justified by heavy documentation, and sometimes not even that will work. Nursing staff and attending physician on duty may want to go with 72 hour hold, but pressure comes from "upstairs". Or, things go other way, upstairs reviews things and says "go ahead" but nursing and attending medical staff don't want their names attached to the thing.

It boils down to this; it is no longer possible to put people away just because they are doing something that bothers you. A man walking down the street talking to himself or whatever just isn't going to cut it.

Yes, closing down State Asylums was a big mistake. The Libs wanted them closed down because they want everyone to be free and the Cons wanted them closed down because they don't believe in spending $ for social programs of any kind. When both extremes have the same view things will happen. The fact is lock down mental institutions can always be looked at to make them more humane but shutting them down was exactly the wrong answer.

I think I’ve mentioned this before but me and my friends broke into the Danvers State grounds when I was a teenager. Most “bad” kids around the area do. We wanted to see ghosts and shit. It was miles and miles of pitch black and I was more scared of the wild animals running around than I was seeing ghosts lol.

And yes shutting down nut houses was a big mistake. Think of all the neurotic extremists running around today, they’d all be bound up in padded walls instead of being celebrated or part of a group.

Most of the people who get sucked into some kind of cultish belief are no different than any of the other people who did the same in decades prior, and they weren't the ones who were institutionalized.

"The Libs" didn't want the institutions shut down. The problem was that there were too many abuses, and the government wasn't about to pay to fund decent homes with good oversight.

Another problem was that the advent of Thorazine drastically reduced the number of mentally ill who needed permanent institutionalization, so JFK signed a bill to make smaller, local hospitals the norm, instead of those big institutions.

And that would have been fine had Repugs not then refused to allow institutionalization to be paid for by Medicare or Medicaid. That reduced the number of patients even further, including people who NEEDED to be in an institution. Locally, Repug politicians wouldn't allow those smaller mental health centers to be funded.

As an ElderGay I definitely remember as a kid that there was always the threat of sending you off to reform school or the nut house if you didn't behave. Fear of incarceration is a great way to raise kids 🙄

Look at "Splendor in the Grass" or, "Nympho Goes to Bellevue After Being Dicknotized By Warren Beatty "

It was not a mistake to close them. It was a typical American mistake that the "richest country in the world" failed to adequately fund the next step in health care for these people. Community based health care is VERY expensive and also you have the issue of the right to refuse very important medication. So there you have it. At least in many rich European countries there is adequately funded COMMUNITY based health care (which includes mental health care, and housing and food - the works) for crazy people. There is a community home for nut cases down the street from me in fact. I've lived here over 20 years and there is never an issue with these folks and I am socially "good morning how are you" with several of them. A few are kind of catatonic but some really do well with the integrity of being properly housed, cared for, known by "normal" people and shop keepers in their neighborhood.

The biggest mistake was allowing the Republicans to MASSIVELY UNDERFUND the expected services and infrastructures of a post-industrial rich nation. That is the appalling mistake, and everyone puts up with it. Even the elected democrats.

That Atlantic article questioned the assumption, which I also had, that closing down the asylums increased the prison population, since cops became the de facto custodians of people having a mental health crisis.

However, the author points out that incarceration rates skyrocketed after Nixon's war on drugs in addition to the "broken windows" approach to crime--the idea that arresting people for petty crimes would prevent bigger crimes. Supporting this position is the fact that most inmates in the asylums were white and lived with families, while the prison population is fifty percent people of color with many being homeless. Most mentally ill people in prison are substance abusers (self-medication).

I can add my own limited experience to the point--my white, middle class mother was committed to Agnew State Hospital in 1968 and I've been inside it. Not pleasant but not visibly a snake pit, neither were the private hospitals she was in--most mentally ill people are medicated to a state of near-paralysis. The overriding impression you get in mental institutions is narcosis, not animation.

Agreed. Horrible history but the alternative is much worse.

A thread to complement this one:

Psychiatric drugs just zonk you out. They disturb your sleep etc so u have no energy. They never do as well as sugar pills in studies. If u want to understand evil, study psychiatrists.

r45 = Thomas Szasz

I still say LOCK THEM UP... Re-open the LUNATIC ASYLUM - Start at your local Trump Rally. Lots of patients in need of shock therapy and padded cells running amuck.

So what do other countries do with their mentally ill? Dump them on ice floes or deep in the woods?

If you are diagnosed with some mental illness, you can't be cured and you are beyond help. Stop throwing money at hopeless causes.

In my entire life, I have never seen a schizo getting cured or fairly managed, never. Just lock them up.

Like I said, I know the horrible history and, yes, it's terrible. But the alternative is the lunatics are now running the asylum, being voted to high offices in the US and it's just spreading. Look how the Trump derangement seemed to spread. It started with his followers, aping his vile words about women, immigrants, and everything else. Insane people were finally given their voice back and it's not going to end. Yes, R49, lock them up. Sane, rational society needs a break from the last 7 years of madness this man and like minded people have created.

R49 I think it's a case by case basis. Some people with schizophrenia are able to function if they routinely take antipsychotics—the problem is, most don't , and there is little that can be done to supervise or ensure it if they are living on their own in society. Some are so mentally ill that they can't care for themselves, and most end up spiraling into drugs as a coping mechanism for their mental illness, which in reality only exacerbates their condition. What's scary about this is that schizophrenia is by nature unpredictable, and some people can turn violent on a dime.

The absurd part is that many of these people end up in an endless loop of being in the system anyway, as they are in and out of jail for various transgressions. It usually takes them killing someone or committing a violent crime to end up institutionalized in psychiatric care. I firmly believe that people who are this mentally unwell belong in an institution where they can have their basic needs met and be helped as much as is possible by doctors/psychiatrists. True, they may never recover, but at least they aren't freezing to death outside, shitting on sidewalks, or posing a threat to the public.

I agree that we need these places for a safe haven for those on the streets - safety for them and the public in general.

Danvers was the perfect system. The buildings in the front were for overnight/weekend/week patients who just needed a safe place to stay while they worked out their issues.

As the buildings went further back, more severe patients were kept, until the last building, which was for the criminally insane, like Greg Locke and his flock should be kept.

Of course, they will see this as a rounding up of God's righteous ones or Illuminati/deep state nonsense - but the general public would finally be able to breathe a sense of relief if these dangerous mental patients were finally locked up.

The price of closing the mental health institutions have been an overt homelessness and crime. It’s intentional neglect to make conditions desperate for the masses, and to continue to have a boogeyman to blame.

R53 is the one making mentally ill people into the boogeyman. Most mentally ill people are not criminals, and most criminals are not mentally ill. Republicans want to blame crime on the "mentally ill" to pretend crime isn't about the availability of guns.

The biggest asylum is still fully operating and financed by taxpayers…the United States Congress.

I did my psychiatric nurse training & my aunt ran the geriatrics building at one of our state psych hospitals. At one point the hospital was the largest hospital in the world. Not the largest psych hospital…the largest hospital. It had its own post office, zip code, train station and a farm that produced all the vegetables, milk, butter, eggs and some ham via pigs.

The hospital wasn’t bad at all. It was one of 3 huge psych hospitals within a 50 mile radius . In 1930s there was a fourth psych hospital in the area . Plus there was a criminal psychiatric hospital in the next county.

The hospitals were built in the countryside because it was believed that city life was crowded, noisy, stressful and unhealthy. It was also believed that a lot of people needed to get away from their home environment. Families were larger in those days. People were so poor that families were often malnourished. Domestic abuse wasn’t a thing…men could beat their wives, parents could beat their children and nobody would do anything about it.

A severely psychotic patient could ruin a family … the family could get evicted because of bad behavior on the part of one family member.

There were lots of reasons why people needed to be placed outside the home/family. There was no psychotherapy, no medication. Also, drug addicts didn’t go to jail - they were put in psych hospitals.

So some families needed protection from disturbed family members.

Some people needed protection from their whole families.

Unfortunately, women were targeted by husbands and could be placed in mental hospitals for life because of post partum depression and menopause. Sometimes the husband just found another woman and gaslighted his wife. Men were in charge. The doctors were all male. Husbands would go to Dr and accuse wife of all kinds of craziness. Dr would commit the woman.

Psych hospitals started out fine. But as time went on they became restrictive. Patients used to work on the farm, in the laundry, in kitchens. Civil rights organizations said it was slave labor, so all of that went away. Lots of patients had enjoyed doing farm work. It gave them something to do and they felt they were in fresh air and sunshine.

Some people were simply homeless and didn’t have the smarts to get a decent job and make the rent. We all know someone like that in our families.

States were being accused of malpractice & false imprisonment. By 1970s our state was CONSTANTLY having surprise inspections as well as JCAHO inspections. Newspapers would blast “Violations found at state mental hospital!” when it was just record keeping/clerical errors. Snake pits were down south……

….By 1970s most psych hospitals were ok but costs were soaring. Lawsuits alone were constant. The biggest problem was that you had a population that was generally committed without its permission. That caused resentment. Every committed patient wanted to sue and there were plenty of lawyers who’d do it.

The hospitals became cooped up….patients weren’t allowed outside anymore, in case they got hurt & sued.

A man was allowed out on a weekend pass and killed his wife. No more weekend passes after that.

Every time a patient had to go to a regular hospital for treatment, a nurses aide from the state hospital was required to stay with the patient round the clock. An aging population = more medical care needed = more hospitalizations = more nurses aides being paid by state to work *outside of* the state psych hospital.

There were so, so many reasons why the hospitals shut down.

The main one was cost. They were 100% taxpayer supported and costs were skyrocketing. All kinds of new protections were put in place for patients to prevent them from suing. It cost more to have those provisions than the lawsuits cost. States were groaning under the costs and media was constantly screaming about how horrible the state system was. Geraldo Rivera made his bones on Willowbrook, which led to shutdown of state developmental centers.

Medication came along. Thorazine, Valium, Librium, Haldol, benzos. Then antidepressant medications came along - MAO inhibitors. States said, “Why are we paying for inpatient psychiatry? We don’t pay for medical health. State supported mental health care is socialized medicine. We don’t have socialized medicine in US. So let’s get rid of the whole taxpayer supported psych system”

And they did.

They discharged everyone into “community mental wellness centers.” These were actually boarding houses. A few group homes were built…guess who ended up in them? The drug addicted children of politicians & millionaires. You had to know somebody powerful and go on a waiting list to get admitted into one of those group homes.

Everyone else was prescribed medication and dumped into boarding houses or marginal nursing homes.

What can we replace the state mental hospital system with? Nobody wants to pay to build trillions of tax dollars worth of new hospitals. Maybe big mouthed Elon Musk can build a psych hospital system for the 21st century instead of making dick rockets & getting plastic surgery.

At least they left this one standing.

Now they all meet at something called CPAC.

This one is still in operation.

I want the one where Ingrid Bergman is the chief physician.

State hospitals would often force women inmates in the men's ward where they would be raped. This was in order to 'calm down the men' when they were acting up.

We're bringing it to the American people in every state.

the fact of the matter is there will always be a small group of people for whatever reason cannot function in society . they need to be removed from society for the sake of themselves and others

I'm confused. Wiki says this handsome building was demolished but not demolished.

r64 but people do not believe that... and will always view mental health facilities through the lens of entertainment media and history well outside of it's own time.

Most alternatives are SROs.. which are truly worse. Often nice facades but disarray within. Then there are group homes, which are variable but often the same as homeless shelters and if not providing this service would likely be condemned.

other opportunities are rarer, more for those that can afford them and when space is available. . .

OP is a moron. The people who are ruining the country with their hate and conspiracy theories are NOT the ones who would be locked up in asylums if they ever came back.

Mental illness is not the same as being a raging asshole.

One of them.

[quote]Mental illness is not the same as being a raging asshole.

That’s debatable.

Like everything else, the optimal solution here is somewhere in the middle.

Institutions need to be brought back for the severely mentally ill who can't or won't be treated on an outpatient basis. Right now, there are too many on the street. I see them every day in NYC, and their number is growing.

Community health centers need to be fully funded.

Mental health is the biggest crisis in the US right now and needs serious investment. A random scroll through Twitter makes that abundantly clear.

With the omnipresence of social media, it's unlikely the abuses of the institutions of the '50s and '60s would be repeated.

Every civilian is chasing clout by exposing perceived injustice on their personal Twitter or TikTok account, not to mention the actual journalists who are desperately trying to keep their jobs by breaking clickworthy exposés every week.

Yes, open up nut houses and lock up all MAGAts. They are the most severely mentally I’ll and pose a threat to our society.

What mental illness do Magats have?

Bipolar, depression, schizophrenia?

Don’t stigmatize the mentally ill by lumping them in with Trump voters.

r73, MAGATS are delusional. They have been conditioned to believe lies, without questioning them. Delusion is a defining characteristic of mental illness. If I tell you that, despite what your senses tell you, the sun rises in the west and sets in the east and then you begin passing that same message on to other people, you have now exhibited delusional thinking - ie mental illness.

Believing that Trump won in 2020 is an example of delusional thinking. Believing that Trump is a good or noble person, whose mission is to save the US is also an example of delusional thinking. Believing that Trump has been unfairly persecuted and that he has never done anything illegal or unethical is an example of delusional thinking.

The problem is that they don't recognize their own mental illness and would greet any attempt to diagnose them or treat them with great hostility and anger (and probably gunfire).

Ask the followers of Jim Jones’ cult what mental illness is….oh, wait, they’re all dead from drinking the cult koolaid.

Silly me…

The mistake was not adopting universal health care including mental health care, and not building the community based mental health infrastructure, including staffed group homes, and hiring all the mental health staff. The mistake of USA is ALWAYS Dillinger Capitalism where MOST of the wealth must flow upward to a smallish percentage of Americans.

In the last year of Jimmy Carter's presidency, Ted Kennedy got a piece of legislation called the Mental Health Systems Act through Congress (nearly unanimously in both chambers). It would have been truly transformative.

About six months into Reagan's first term, they repealed almost all of it.

Reagan is responsible for this and repealing the Fairness Doctrine, two events that sent us down this path that we're on today.

The posters defending Reagan and blaming "the woke Left" are misinformation trolls. Ignore.

I want to try Thorazine.

Yes, tell MAGAts that Thorazine is the new formulary for hydroxychloroquine. No more COVID ever again. It would be a cure-all for all that plagues them.

Our Medicaid reimbursement rate doesn't pay enough to turn the lights on let alone hire the licensed professionals required to do the work. And then there is the constant audit risk to pull more money back from an already losing proposition.

Agree with most here. Like I said in the OP, the history is horrible, but the alternative is worse. DEEPLY SICK NATION. And like some have pointed out, with cameras everywhere, social media, etc. the abuses wouldn't be as easy as it was in the past.

People like Alex Jones screaming about fake mass shootings, Illuminati/Q-Anon, could be sectioned, sedated and quietly drooling in a padded cell - where he belongs... along with Jewish Space Lasers Marjorie Taylor Greene and the dumbest cunt ever, Lauren Boebert... and of course that fat pig Donald Trump.

We have a deeply sick nation, with the mental patients running it.

We are currently paying for all the sins of Republican fuckery from the last 40 years simultaneously at this point of time. Don’t ask me why all this shit is hitting the fan only now simultaneously. All I know is that every decent American is getting elephant-fucked up the ass right now. Shit!

Insane asylums used to be open to the public. It helped keep abuse from being hidden.

[quote]Institutions need to be brought back for the severely mentally ill who can't or won't be treated on an outpatient basis. Right now, there are too many on the street. I see them every day in NYC, and their number is growing.

None of what you wrote would be allowed today. Several seminal lawsuits make it impossible to treat those who don’t want treatment.

Republicans don't want health care and they especially don't want mental health care. That would expose how many of their followers are mentally ill. They're base are religious "believers". They have been conditioned from birth to believe lies and shit. They don't want them to wake up from their delusions. That's why they weaponized the work WOKE almost immediately. They want to keep their voters/followers asleep like the good little sheep they are.

[quote]Reagan is responsible for this and repealing the Fairness Doctrine, two events that sent us down this path that we're on today.

The repeal of the Fairness Doctrine is about as well understood on datalounge as deinstitutionalization. No, we were heading down this path well before the Fairness Doctrine was repealed.

Again, these fuckers are not mentally ill. But your friends and family with mental illnesses can see how you equate being the worst of humanity with having a mental illness.

My dad told stories about his high school buddies breaking into asylum rooms and raping the mental I’ll women. There wasn’t a lot of security in the 50/60s, and no one would believe the women anyway. The asylum was within walking distance to his neighborhood.

[quote] State hospitals would often force women inmates in the men's ward where they would be raped. This was in order to 'calm down the men' when they were acting up.

What bullshit . At our 3 state hospitals, male workers worked with male patients and and female workers worked with female patients. There were male security guards in all buildings. There was no way female workers would’ve allowed such a thing back. The females workers were lower income, usually children of Irish immigrants who’d worked in mansions (there were lots of mansions/estates in early part of 20th century). They were churchgoers who believed in heaven and hell and that sinners for their sins. They would beat the shit out of anyone trying to pull that.

Also, doctors lived on the grounds in free housing and there was a free live-in nursing school on the grounds. If you had a problem you called a Dr and got an order to restrain and medicate any dangerous patients. You had a duty to protect other patients (as well as protect yourself). There was plenty of staff in those days. Entire neighborhoods and towns were dependent on hospital jobs and wouldn’t put their jobs in jeopardy. It wasn’t like nowadays when every workplace is deliberately understaffed in order to turn the most profit.

State hospitals were seen as a two-fold benefit - they provided food, shelter and treatment to patients and they provided loads of jobs for the local economy. Groundskeeping, masonry, electricians, custodians, laundry jobs, plumbers, housekeeping, kitchen workers, nurses, nursing assistants, orderlies, security. People were grateful for their jobs which they held onto for 25 years and for which they received full benefits and a pension.

People just make shit up about psych hospitals. Or they are talking about psych hospitals in the Deep South where people have always been depraved.

Closing down all of The State Asylums was the sort of hysterical overreaction regularly made by the American politicians trying to satisfy the woke mob.

Other example would be the dead freeze on nuclear development after Three Mile Island, the campaign to ban war toys after a Palestinian murdered Bobby Kennedy, and the Defund the Police movement after a career criminal filled with Fentanyl died resisting arrest.

OP, good question, but I think you might be asking for the wrong reason(s) - Trumpers may be stupid but not all of them are crazy. There's been a lot of legitimate chaos and change in the last 50 years and I can understand why people were looking for an answer or solution. (Not so much WHO they picked for that, of course.)

But I wonder sometimes if asylums or poorhouses would have been kinder to the people now living on the streets, many of whom are mentally ill or unable to care for themselves.

Unfortunately we can never have that level of public support in this country again. The mass corporatization of America means companies refuse to pay even the tiniest of taxes, so basic things like social services and infrastructure are crumbling by the second.