We suck at mental health. When budgets are cut, the first thing to go is mental health. A number of states have good laws on the books but they are completely unfunded and useless.
Closing mental instituations was a mixed bag - they were abusive, with people becoming deeply institutionalized, but they served a purpose that was not addressed in the massive de-institutionalizations that occurred. Most of those closings were done for budgetary reasons - and the money saved, which was supposed to go into community support - never did, leaving thousands of people unsupported and ill in communities with no facilities to help them. It sucked and it wasn't just a blue states it was red states. NC has had a lot of indepth investigative journalism on this - on how the money from the closing of big state institutions was then used for other things, not for mental health support.
mhanational.org