Why Hasn’t The ACLU Answered for Closing Mental Hospitals?

Sure, Jan!

And I bet you're one of those Republicans trying to blame mass shootings on "mental illness" because you don't want to blame guns

You won't say anything about Republicans like Greg Abbott cutting funding for mental health services, either

it's on their fucking website.

Don't fall for the revisionist history. Reagan was all too happy that the ACLU went after the most despicable cases of fraud and abuse, giving him cover. He promised a replacement but never got around to actually proposing or doing anything (other than take the million dollar speaking fees for 10-minutes of babbling).

Trump said he was going to bring them back, he never did.

We need them back.

[quote] Don't fall for the revisionist history. Reagan was all too happy that the ACLU went after the most despicable cases of fraud and abuse, giving him cover.

Reagan didn’t close them, retard. The ACLU was behind the entire thing. Accept reality. Your revisionist history comes from the Left like trannies rewriting Stonewall.

The ACLU is transing gay kids. They need to be shut down.

So now they roam the streets, shitting everywhere and bothering everyone, instead of being properly taken care of. But hey, at least they're free and unmolested by the orderlies, so there's that.

Frankly if we can't run prisons well without massive graft and corruption and murders and so forth, I think a for-profit asylum system would also be a bad idea.

If it was run by the federal government and done properly and was accountable to the people, perhaps. But the states would likely control them, Republican states would privitize them and they would end up just like federal prisons.

Fix the prisons first before making a new problem.

[quote]The ACLU is transing gay kids.

Planned Parenthood, too.

Now we just stick the mentally ill in prisons

They could have created a better program for those affected by mental health issues as well as those affected by developmental disabilities by building some campus facilities. That would have taken money though.

This could be monitored/supervised residences depending on the level of care needed. Some people, especially people with developmental disabilities can live very independently. Some stay with families or live semi-independently with families helping. But not everyone has family or a family willing to do that.

No reason it couldn't be modeled from retirement communities where some people need more help than others. Duplexes, garden apartments, townhomes, etc. For those in need of more care there can be more dorm like facility. And those who are dangerous can be locked the hell up - humanely mind you and with care and activities but not on the street.

OP is correct.

But the ACLU also has a point - are you just going to lock people up against their will?

If they're displaying extreme antisocial behavior, sure.

It's not about "locking up" people necessarily. It's about placing them under some kind of care or supervision depending on their needs. It can be under "the least restrictive conditions" standards that would ensure their safety and well-being and the safety of the community type standards.

But, yes, some people are not competent to take care of themselves and need assistance.

R12 I have provided care for developmentally disabled adults with IQs below 60. They most definitely cannot live on their own. They can have tantrums that get pretty violent. Not uncommon to see them assault elderly care givers (usually mothers).Sadly we usually medicate them with antipsychotics to sedate them. It is not uncommon for these low IQ types to be nonverbal, and they grunt and scream instead of speaking.

The seriously mentally ill you see on the streets tend to have higher rates of violence. That is why they end up in prisons. I have worked with them in CA prisons; CA Dept of corrections has had a federally monitored mental health program in place for the past 20 years. When they get too crazy and violent for prison, we would send them to the few forensic state hospitals (Atascadero, Patton, Norwalk). I refused to work in these places because the violent loons get to wander around free and the assault rate on staff is astronomical.

R8, they weren't properly taken care of in mental institutions

Also, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not violent, they are more likely to be a threat to themselves than to others

Funny how you Republicans keep hyping up "mentally illness" but you want to cut funding for services to help mentally ill people

Just wanted to add that the high assault rate at these forensic hospitals is due to....the ACLU. In regular psych units I have seen nurses get earrings ripped out of their ears, hair pulled out in clumps, punched in the head, etc. I myself was beaten unconscious by a criminal patient faking mental illness to avoid prison.

No one with good training wants to work in these violent places. When I worked in the prisons, I was always one of the few MDs who had gone to a US Med School and good residency.

On Reddit, there are threads where people post pictures of abandoned buildings. So many of them are of HUGE old mental facilities. Just gigantic old hospitals, all falling down now. I can't imagine they can even be saved. If they started opening mental hospitals again, I guess they wouldn't go for those old imposing buildings anyway.

If they hadn't emptied the insane asylums, the Republican Party would no longer exist.

Ahem, R17 - this happens everywhere, every state.

Most mental health workers get assaulted. Fact.

They should not have been using them for medical research.

And it will happen again. It is happening in prisons now.

What nonsense R22.

[quote]Reagan was all too happy that the ACLU went after the most despicable cases of fraud and abuse, giving him cover.

The hospitals were closed by the time Reagan came around. Deinstitutionalization actually started under Kennedy and it was largely over by the time Reagan was President. What Reagan did was turn funding for community based mental health care into block grants.

Correct, in the late 60s the LPS act was passed in CA which made it very difficult to commit a mentally ill person.

And to add…the ACLU has made it very difficult to help the mental ill and homeless during emergencies. For example, during extreme cold weather you can’t bring people living on the street to a shelter if they don’t want to go.

One of the few things I strongly disagree with with ACLU. There’s a lot of blame to go around with deinstitutionalization and the ACLU is most certainly in line for it.

I bet if I put some of the ACLU lawyers in some of the psych units I have worked at, they would quickly change their tune and advocate for making it easier to commit seriously mentally ill and medicate them over consent.

The ACLU not only gets more useless as time goes by, it gets more dangerous and harmful to society.

My heart is broken.

R23 you've got to be kidding. The prison system in the US is abysmal. Of course all sorts of things could be happening in for-profit prisons.

Do other countries like UK, France, Germany etc have the same mental care issues as in the US, or this is just another US exceptionalism?

In all fairness, the ACLU didn't give access to AR-15's.

[quote]Reagan didn’t close them, retard.

Yes, he did. My mother-in-law lost her job in a mental hospital when his budget cuts went through, decimating the social safety net.

[quote]Yes, he did. My mother-in-law lost her job in a mental hospital when his budget cuts went through, decimating the social safety net.

Institutionalization peaked in the 1950s. By the time the 1980s rolled around it was at its lowest in numbers. I have no doubt that your mother-in-law lost her job in the 80s and I have no doubt it was due to budget cuts…but your mother-in-law was working in a place that was destined to close anyway. Drugs like Thorazine that were considered groundbreaking, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Willowbrook, good intentioned but naive doctors and several seminal lawsuits ensured the closing of your mother-in-law’s workplace.

By the time the 80s rolled around the focus was on community based health. Carter was a big supporter of this initiative. Reagan came along and defunded what Carter did by turning it into block grants. The thing is…neither Carter or Reagan were right or wrong in their actions. Carter overestimated the abilities of community based healthcare to help those who didn’t want help and Reagan the programs weren’t working and felt states should have control of how these programs were funded…so with the states having control the money went elsewhere.