Which is exactly what happened during the Reagan years. The number of homeless on the streets doubled after he released most mental patients from the hospitals.
Why do Progressives constantly lie and make such obvious, futile attempts at re-writing history.
HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN
By RICHARD D. LYONS
Published: October 30, 1984
[...]
A detailed picture has emerged from a series of interviews and a review of public records, research reports and institutional recommendations. The picture is one of cost-conscious policy makers, who were quick to buy optimistic projections that were, in some instances, buttressed by misinformation and by a willingness to suspend skepticism.
Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society.
The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen.
'They've Gone Far, Too Far'
In California, for example, the number of patients in state mental hospitals reached a peak of 37,500 in 1959 when Edmund G. Brown was Governor, fell to 22,000 when Ronald Reagan attained that office in 1967, and continued to decline under his administration and that of his successor, Edmund G. Brown Jr. The senior Mr. Brown now expresses regret about the way the policy started and ultimately evolved. ''They've gone far, too far, in letting people out,'' he said in an interview.
[...]
Charles Schlaifer, a New York advertising executive who served as secretary-treasurer of the group, said he was now disgusted with the advice presented by leading psychiatrists of that day. ''Tranquilizers became the panacea for the mentally ill,'' he said. ''The state programs were buying them by the carload, sending the drugged patients back to the community and the psychiatrists never tried to stop this. Local mental health centers were going to be the greatest thing going, but no one wanted to think it through.''
Dr. Bertram S. Brown, a psychiatrist and Federal official who was instrumental in shaping the community center legislation in 1963, agreed that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson were to some extent misled by the mental health community and Government bureaucrats.
''The bureaucrat-psychiatrists realized that there was political and financial overpromise,'' he said.
Dr. Brown, then an executive of the National Institute of Mental Health and now president of Hahnemann University in Philadelphia, stated candidly in an interview: ''Yes, the doctors were overpromising for the politicians. The doctors did not believe that community care would cure schizophrenia, and we did allow ourselves to be somewhat misrepresented.''
[...]
Jack R. Ewalt, who directed the staff of the Joint Commission when it was founded in 1955, says now that he remains ''a great believer in the use of drugs, but they are just another treatment, not a magic.''
''Drugs can help people get back to the community,'' he said, ''but they have to have medical care, a place to live and someone to relate to. They can't just float around aimlessly.''
Dr. Ewalt said the 1963 act was supposed to have the states continue to take care of the mentally ill but that many states simply gave up and ceded most of their responsibility to the Federal Government.
''The result was like proposing a plan to build a new airplane and ending up only with a wing and a tail,'' Dr. Ewalt said. ''Congress and the state governments didn't buy the whole program of centers, plus adequate staffing, plus long-term financial supports.''
HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN
