Perhaps we should remind that the Democrats emptied the mental hospitals.
" On Feb. 5, 1963, ... President John F. Kennedy addressed Congress on "Mental Illness and Mental Retardation." He proposed a new program under which the federal government would fund community mental-health centers, or CMHCs, to take the place of state mental hospitals. As Kennedy envisioned it, "reliance on the cold mercy of custodial isolations will be supplanted by the open warmth of community concern and capability."
E. Fuller Torrey: Fifty Years of Failing America's Mentally Ill
In The Wall Street Journal, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey writes that JFK's dream of replacing state mental hospitals with community mental-health centers is now a hugely expensive nightmare.www.wsj.com
Hard truths about deinstitutionalization, then and now
Ronald Reagan and Jerry Brown, two of the most consequential governors ever in California, led the state during two of the most well intended but poorly executed movements in this state’s history. The first was the de-institutionalization of the mentally ill. The second resulted in fewer prison...
calmatters.org