Ronald Reagan's Shameful Legacy: Violence, the homeless, mental illness (Dr. E. Fuller Torrey/Salon
September 29, 2013)
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness
TIMELINE: Deinstitutionalization And Its Consequences (Deanna Pan April 29, 2013 Mother Jones)
"How deinstitutionalization moved thousands of mentally ill people out of hospitals-and into jails and prisons"
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/04/timeline-mental-health-america
Let's talk about the state of the mental health of The United States of America and the crazy quilt of policies and history, shall we?
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)Nobody else even comes close.
MBS
(9,688 posts)It marked the onset of a debilitating and shameful national disease, caused not only by Ronnie, but also by the voters who voted for him twice.
The disease is not only manifest in the prevailing ultra-conservative, bigoted mindset (Rosalynn Carter once said, after Ronnie's election: "He makes us comfortable with our prejudices"
. It also marked the loss of a sense of the common good and the onset , so alien to our history and national character, of a head-in-the-sand, don't-think-about-tomorrow "can't-do" mindset, resulting in needless and ultimately tragic delays in maintenance of infrastructure, innovative forward-looking solutions to energy, conservation and climate-change; and improvement in public transportation; and many other urgent problems which once were the product of bipartisan consensus, but now were frozen by political games of the Republican party. Not to mention everything else that's been screwed up in the last+ 35 years.
The fact that so many people still consider Ronnie a hero just boggles my mind. And confirms that the disease continues to do our nation damage.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Let's talk about the state of mental health in The United States of America-it's not a taboo. I love the fact that homosexuality was a "diagnosable" major mental illness until 1973, don't you?
appalachiablue
(41,177 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)When did prisons become acceptable mental healthcare facilities? (Stanford Law School 2013 pdf Adobe Reader version)
http://www.law.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/child-page/632655/doc/slspublic/Report_v12.pdf
From the University of Chicago Law School
Reducing Mass Incarceration: Lessons From the Deinstitutionalization of Mental Hospitals in the 1960's (Bernard E. Harcourt 2011 Adobe Reader version)
http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1509&context=journal_articles
The mental health profession in the United States of America has "leadership" comprised of mad scientists, neo-nazi eugenicists, torturers, cultists and the amoral- "leaders" and "policies" that have harmed millions of citizens for decades, didn't you know?
It's that simple, people. Some of these powerful "leaders" are nuts.
Today our veterans and their families are still the most abused of all.
What do you think?
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)FBI)
https://leb.fbi.gov/2014/february/responding-to-persons-with-mental-illness-can-screening-checklists-aid-law-enforcement
Again, who made law enforcement mental health therapists (some function as death squads) and jails psychiatric hospitals???
What about the mentally ill officers, politicians and their extended families???
I read the article's "checklist", many of the candidates for POTUS are meeting many of its "criteria"-nothing new there at all.
Woe.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)health today here in America-or am I wrong? Kick for further discussion.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)(formerly Wackenhut Corrections)
"...the world's leading provider of correctional, detention, and community reentry services..."
Much of the state of mental health in America can be found in for profit cells, right?
GEO Group (The Center for Media and Democracy/Source Watch)
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/GEO_Group
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)
markpkessinger
(8,408 posts). . . or even primarily, at his feet. The movement for de-institutionalization of the mentally ill had begin in the 1960s. Let's not forget that there were a variety of factors that played into the push for de-institutionalization: the fact that far too many people were institutionalized who should not have been, the resulting pressure that placed on state budgets, and, last but not least, the horrendous conditions that prevailed in many of the nation's state-run mental hospitals, and the fact that the economic model on which many of those institutions ran and by which they remained economically viable -- a model of involuntary, unpaid labor by patients -- had been ruled by the courts to be unconstitutional. (Many of these institutions closed simply because they no longer had the means to remain open once they could no longer exploit the labor of patients.)
What we can blame Reagan for is the failure to provide funding for the support services that were supposed to go along with de-institutionalization. But even there, it wasn't Reagan alone -- it was also the U.S. Congress, as well as much of the American public, which had little interest in funding those support services.
The original goals of the de-institutionalization movement were commendable. The old model of the involuntary warehousing of the mentally ill, and in often appalling conditions, which subsisted on what was effectively the slave labor of patients, represented a serious abuse of human rights. The question of adequate support services (and adequate funding for them) should not be conflated with the question of de-institutionalization per se.
bobthedrummer
(26,083 posts)Big Pharma with all its poisonous quackery in the huge lobby and the "miracles" promised by more "research". Yep. Reagan was an actor-that is a fact, just like the formulators of his "mental health" policies included many eugenicists-that's what I get from your post markpkessinger. Am I reading that part right? That's the basis of my drawing the similarity on the "life unworthy of life" example. Eugenics.
markpkessinger
(8,408 posts). . . but the point I was making is that the movement towards de-institutionalization should not, per se, be demonized. There were good, even necessary, reasons for it. The problems associated with it lay in the lack of commitment to funding the follow-up care that was necessary and which was originally envisioned. And as for Reagan, I didn't say he didn't play a significant role. I said the problems were not _entirely_ his making. Sorry if that distinction is too subtle for you.