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The Nation's Pulse
A Travesty
The liberal record on mental illness is everywhere in evidence.
A piece in the Denver Post recently caught my eye. Titled “A Court for Mental Illness,” it was by columnist Susan Thornton and chronicled the establishment of a special court in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District designed to serve exclusively people with mental health histories who are charged with a crime, and with the idea of keeping them from behind bars, if possible. Colorado is not the first state to try this method to deal with its burgeoning population of the mentally ill incarcerated in its county jails and state prison system. There are approximately 150 of these courts nationwide.
Currently a quarter million people suffering from one of the three major mental illnesses (schizophrenia, bipolar or manic depressive disorder, and clinical depression) are in U.S. prisons and county jails, costing taxpayers approximately $30,000 per inmate annually. Nationwide, 30% of correctional inmates need mental health services. The average county jail sentence today is 20 days, but psychiatric red tape means the mentally ill average four months, saddling the taxpayer with that extra burden. The mentally ill have a recidivism rate — for mostly petty crimes — of 50%. And needless to say, they are subject to the vicious attentions of their fellow inmates in hideous ways.
For four years (1986-90) I served on the ward staff at Vermont State Hospital (VSH) in Waterbury. At the time they were in the process of shrinking their “client” population. In those four years I saw that population cut in half, from roughly 200 to 100, and one building with four wards closed and renovated for office space for the use of other state agencies moving ten miles from the capital Montpelier. In 1965 VSH housed over 1,200 patients. During my tenure I thought the closing-down program was odd, given that Vermont was a low population state (approx. 500,000) with only one state hospital. But this ongoing process was national in scope. It was called “deinstitutionalization” (the sort of word only a politically correct liberal could love).
The deinstitutionalization or “anti-psychiatry” movement started in the 1960s (no surprise there) and is rooted in the psychoanalytic writings of R.D. Laing, a Scottish psychiatrist and author of The Divided Self (1960), a book that seems to have come to many wrong conclusions about schizophrenia, such as emphasizing environmental factors over biological ones; and Thomas Szasz, another psychiatrist , whose book The Myth of Mental Illness (1961), simply dismisses its existence at all. Taken together (if possible), their theories posit that mental illness isn’t a pejorative state, but just another way of perceiving reality. Crazy people aren’t crazy. And they certainly have a right to pursue their alternate cognitive lifestyles. Toss lawyers into this mix and you have a recipe for blatant social engineering. For years, attorneys representing advocacy groups have successfully sued state hospital systems, the results of these suits actually governing how they operate.
Most of the suits concerned the “rights” of patients to refuse treatment and medication, or arranged a discharge for or against the wishes of the family. It became a case of the inmates — actually their lawyers — running the asylum. Over the years as hospitals closed or shrunk, most states set up county-based group homes that are light on security, and not popular if you happen to live in the same neighborhood. Or patients are simply discharged from hospitals as “stabilized,” when they’re not considered a threat to themselves or others, but sometimes with tragic results.
Take America’s “homeless” problem, for example. Liberals believe it is axiomatic that people living on the streets are economically oppressed. But anyone who has ever encountered a disheveled and delusional panhandler on a city street knows better.
To borrow a phrase popular on the Left, deinstitutionalization is the “root cause” of the homeless problem. Other than during the Great Depression, America has never seen a time like the last three decades, where large numbers of people were living out-of-doors in parks, under freeway overpasses, or on city streets. While liberals are notorious for padding such numbers, it’s likely that 125,000 (2007) “chronically homeless” people currently live this way. And it’s estimated that 57% have mental health histories. Compounding this are high rates of alcoholism and drug abuse (27%) among these poor souls. And this, in turn, means that these folks many times attract the attention of law enforcement.
The prison system won’t stand this strain for long. Soon there will be calls from the Left to provide separate facilities for the incarcerated mentally ill. They will need a safe environment free of the depredations of the criminal-types. Places where their particular diagnosis can be carefully treated through medication and a host of therapeutic programs designed to heal them and once more integrate them with society. And these facilities can have minimum security sections designed for patients with minor or no criminal records at all. Maybe they can be operated by the private sector, such as many “correctional facilities” are today.
In short, the anti-psychiatric Left will insist on reopening many of those shuttered mental hospitals. Or they’ll clamor for the construction of new ones (that’s a plea more likely as liberals when given a choice will always choose to spend other people’s money on grandiose self-serving projects). After all, they have only the best interests of the mentally ill in mind. Right?
This is a terrible state of affairs, but don’t expect people who destroyed a humane and efficient national mental health system that was constantly improving its pharmacological expertise to apologize for it. According to a State of Vermont website dedicated to mental health issues, in 2009 VSH still maintained 54 beds for the Green Mountain State’s severely mentally ill. Much of the patient diaspora has dispersed to the county group homes over the years. But how many of them are in jail? And how many sleep on the streets or in the homeless shelters of Burlington, Rutland, and Montpelier? How many?
About the Author
Bill Croke, formerly of Cody, Wyoming, is a writer in Salmon, Idaho.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (71) | Leave a comment
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Edward L. Thompson| 1.15.10 @ 7:51AM
God damn your Jack-in-the-Box advertisement. I will NEVER eat that crap again!
Sir| 1.15.10 @ 9:48AM
Settle down, Rev. Wright.
God doesn't like that too much. His name carries too much power to be tossed around like that.
I share your sentiment, but cool off, Sir.
Kitty| 1.15.10 @ 8:06AM
Shades of Billie Boggs (a. k. a. Joyce Brown) who terrorized people on Second Ave. in NYC.
...
owyheewine| 1.15.10 @ 9:39AM
This goes a long way to explain Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.
Alert01| 1.15.10 @ 10:34AM
Where I was raised in South Eastern Ct there was a huge mental hospital along the Thames River. There must have been 20 or 25 buildings, some of them 8 or 9 stories. When I was a kid it was full, but sometime in the late 80s it was closed down. What happened was the inmates simply moved from the hospital to the streets of Norwich, New London and other surrounding towns and then from the streets to the jails.
A number of times I visited there, I had an uncle who was in detox, and a friend who was a patient. The people their did strange things but they were will cared for, had 3 squares a day and a place to sleep. They were much better here then they were on the streets or in the jails.
The place now sits there like an empty ghost town. It is prime realistate but nobody will touch it because of the cost of asbestos and lead paint removal, another travesty of liberal policy.
Kathryn Wiley | 1.15.10 @ 10:38AM
Regardless of who's at fault, this development has led to numerous challenges for mentally ill people in the criminal justice system. Insufficient mental health screening and lack of collaboration between the public and prison health systems exacerbate mentally ill prisoners’ conditions by inhibiting treatment. Mentally ill offenders are subject to poor medical practices due to lower in-prison standards of mental health care. Ill inmates are managed by staff members who are insufficiently trained in treating mental illnesses, and they suffer abuse from fellow inmates when mixed with the general prison population. Upon release, reentry planning often excludes access to medical insurance and fails to connect inmates with community treatment facilities, further threatening offenders’ chances of avoiding re-arrest.
We need to ensure the mentally ill receive care and not incarceration.
martinusbear| 1.18.10 @ 1:22AM
If states moved some of their money from prisons and guards to mental health institutions and care providers, we would be a more humane society. Locking up alcoholics, addicts, and other mentally ill people sets our country back hundreds of years.
Dixie Pixie| 1.15.10 @ 11:12AM
Could it be that Liberalism is a previously misdiagnosed mental disorder. Perhaps the Liberals unconsciously wanted to avoid incarceration by destroying the mental health system before the Liberals were found out. Certainly the Obama drones have proven themselves delusional and politically schizophrenic.
Cosmic Surfer| 1.16.10 @ 11:14AM
Isn't that cute - why not embroider it on a pillow . As a former AT that watched the "de-institutionalization" and" de-warehousing" of the Reagan era, I actually know what is true and don't depend on the word of a revisionist to create a fantasy of that truth to justify the continuation of the travesty CREATED by reaganomics.
Reagan singlehandedly, with the flick of his alzheimered hand destroyed millions, throwing them in the street with no medication, life skills, support or families - those with families had them dumped on them with no support, caring or intelligent plan.
Overnight the homeless population grew and the beaches, parks and streets became filled - within weeks, the jails, the prisons and the shelters were teaming with sick, helpless and homeless victims of the Reagan attempt to cut his social budget 9rplacing trained pros with untrained 'paraprofessionals" at 1/4 of the salary; closing the doors of hundreds of hospitals; merging populations of chronic psychotics with low functioning disorders and ascute episodic neurotics, encouraging medical and chemical restraints instead of treatment to handle over-populations and under-staffing) shore up the destroyed economy HE created by gutting the tax system that built the country; by letting the rich become the new royal class and the middle class become the worker drones in his new feudal state.
But don't let reality get in the way of the hate built for anything progressive.
RD Laing promoted a system built on self awareness, self responsibility, self reliance and self sufficiency - a system that during his time found the only treatment modality to be electro-shock, prefrontals and drugs for everyone then throw the zombified bodies into bedlam to rot. But we wouldn't want someone to learn to function on his/her own now would we?
Much like the so called "conservative psychiatric approach" is to this day..it is all about billable hours and no treatment...
Drug them up and let the families support them.
The so-called liberal approach is about treatment...
Before you play your neurotic, predictable, hate game on all things "librul", why not educate yourself to the issue and look at al sides and history to the story.....
Same to those others on this site complaining about the "ghost hospitals" closing in the 80's with "inmates" moving to the city (how enlightened - inmates.....the term of the ignorant ). REAGanomics shut those hospitals not "libruls" but then we wpouldn't want the almighty God of the CONservative willfully ignorant to be tarnished .
1 in 4 people auffer from a mild to severe disorder.
Dixie Pixie| 1.16.10 @ 9:33PM
Greetings Cosmic Surfer
I hope you are felling well today
I am glad to see you are lucid enough to type a stream of condescension rant.
You even double posted.
How Sweet of you.
I do have question. Why is it when the Liberals prescriptions are followed and the predictable human catastrophe occurs, Liberalism always blames Ronald Reagan or some other Republican notable. By your own admission it was Liberalism which tossed the mentally ill out on the streets to become the “Homeless Problem”. Magically Reagan was then responsible for causing the problem. Funny how the “Homeless Problem” disappeared when Clinton was elected.
Another question. Do you honestly expect Obama-Care to conquer any mental illness by cutting money going to health care. Is that not a form of a liberal mental delusion known as “Magical Thinking”.
Dave| 1.17.10 @ 12:54AM
Wow, Mate. This is sober stuff. Emphatic capitalization, comic spelling, strings of periods, and sarcasm. You really are serious about this. May I suggest laying off the caffeine for a while?
Cosmic Surfer| 1.16.10 @ 11:14AM
Isn't that cute - why not embroider it on a pillow . As a former AT that watched the "de-institutionalization" and" de-warehousing" of the Reagan era, I actually know what is true and don't depend on the word of a revisionist to create a fantasy of that truth to justify the continuation of the travesty CREATED by reaganomics.
Reagan singlehandedly, with the flick of his alzheimered hand destroyed millions, throwing them in the street with no medication, life skills, support or families - those with families had them dumped on them with no support, caring or intelligent plan.
Overnight the homeless population grew and the beaches, parks and streets became filled - within weeks, the jails, the prisons and the shelters were teaming with sick, helpless and homeless victims of the Reagan attempt to cut his social budget 9rplacing trained pros with untrained 'paraprofessionals" at 1/4 of the salary; closing the doors of hundreds of hospitals; merging populations of chronic psychotics with low functioning disorders and ascute episodic neurotics, encouraging medical and chemical restraints instead of treatment to handle over-populations and under-staffing) shore up the destroyed economy HE created by gutting the tax system that built the country; by letting the rich become the new royal class and the middle class become the worker drones in his new feudal state.
But don't let reality get in the way of the hate built for anything progressive.
RD Laing promoted a system built on self awareness, self responsibility, self reliance and self sufficiency - a system that during his time found the only treatment modality to be electro-shock, prefrontals and drugs for everyone then throw the zombified bodies into bedlam to rot. But we wouldn't want someone to learn to function on his/her own now would we?
Much like the so called "conservative psychiatric approach" is to this day..it is all about billable hours and no treatment...
Drug them up and let the families support them.
The so-called liberal approach is about treatment...
Before you play your neurotic, predictable, hate game on all things "librul", why not educate yourself to the issue and look at al sides and history to the story.....
Same to those others on this site complaining about the "ghost hospitals" closing in the 80's with "inmates" moving to the city (how enlightened - inmates.....the term of the ignorant ). REAGanomics shut those hospitals not "libruls" but then we wpouldn't want the almighty God of the CONservative willfully ignorant to be tarnished .
1 in 4 people auffer from a mild to severe disorder.
Guy| 1.16.10 @ 8:44PM
Wow! Who knew?
Which particular state hospitals did the federal government run or control? Mr. Reagan did not control the hospitals run within the fifty separate states.
And this just in...from someone who read the article...funding or no funding, the law changed and hospitals and institutions were no longer able to keep patients against their will, unless it could be proven that they were an imminent risk to society. Even family members cannot commit a relative for their own good.
Conservatives and certainly Reagan didn't cause that to come about; that has liberal fingerprints all over it.
4 in 4 liberals suffer a cognitive disorder.
led miner light | 11.25.10 @ 1:46AM
In short, just as we still rely on nation-states for international security, we must still rely on national governments to protect individual rights. Your freedom still depends on where you live.
Pingback| 1.15.10 @ 11:30AM
A Travesty « Depravity links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Uriel| 1.15.10 @ 12:06PM
Is there a felon in the world who could not be diagnosed with a mental illness? Especially today where emotional and social disorders fall under the rubric of mental illness?
Excusing evil on the basis of insanity or mental incompetence is a very dangerous road. It is a slippery slope and we're already half-way down it.
David| 1.15.10 @ 12:46PM
Here in Columbia SC we have experienced the exact same thing. We used to have two large State Hospitals and a third smaller one. Well now we are down to only the third smaller one as the other two are closed. Where did these people go? Based on the hundreds of homeless people in town I would have to guess they went right out onto the street. One of the local hospitals uses what used to be a waiting room to hold Psychiatric patients waiting for a bed at the state hospital and they are often there for days. This doesn't even count the numerous ones that use the emergency room on a daily basis.
Liberals think that is cruel to keep the severely mentally ill locked up and forced to take their medication. Is it any less cruel to alow them to wander the streets addicted to alcohol or drugs trying to pan handle enough money to get their next fix?
Tim| 1.15.10 @ 12:59PM
They live and sometimes die, on the streets. Even in Vermont, where the poor pathetic souls are turned loose daily to wander the streets. Others barricade themselves in government funded housing with 19 cats , 2 rabbits and a parakeet. And that was one traumatized parakeet...
Rex| 1.16.10 @ 1:02AM
I run a homeless mission, and see daily the tragic aftermath of deinstitutionalization. Most of the chronically homeless "street people" in Jackson, Mississippi have been diagnosed with some sort of mental illness. Our state mental hospital will only keep them a few months at best, then discharge them with no place to go. So, they are back on the streets. I know it's politically incorrect to say this, but many of these people need long term institutional care. They are simply not capable of caring for themselves. Their behavioral issues due to the mental illness make them problematic candidates for shelter rehabilitation programs. This is one prime example of a supposedly great idea having long term terrible results.
Anonymous| 1.16.10 @ 8:57AM
Left/liberal types never admit they were wrong, they just "reframe" the debate.
Northern Rebel| 1.16.10 @ 12:13PM
Liberalism IS mental illness!
Trackback| 1.16.10 @ 9:11PM
vt credit repair, on vt credit repair, links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
Smitty| 1.17.10 @ 6:51PM
The 1967 film Titticut Follies no doubt handed liberals the evidence they needed to carry out deinstitutionalization. But anyone with an open mind who views that film and acknowledges the selective use of particular patients thereby making the worst the norm, understands the staff did a remarkable job with the few resources available. The only thing "disturbing" about Titticut and Bridgewater was the way it was exploited by liberals and is a perfect example for Mr. Croke's article.
hooljack | 1.18.10 @ 7:23AM
good topic
nice to read.
Holmes| 1.19.10 @ 4:19AM
We should seriously consider relocating the homeless of America to the desert where they can be gainfully enslaved building pyramids.
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Hristyuha | 1.31.10 @ 9:59AM
Just too many people trying to pretend to be mentally ill, so sometimes mistakenly imprisoned get really sick people
Pingback| 2.8.10 @ 8:51PM
The Myth of Mental Illness links to this page. Here’s an excerpt:
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