Opinion
“You’re on Earth. There’s no cure for that!” ~ Samuel Beckett.
Mental Illness:
Today, we’re experiencing a national disaster that has taken decades to unfold!
Starting in the 1960s with then-Governor Reagan in CA and subsequently perpetuated by then-President Carter in the 1970s, state-run “psychiatric hospitals” were all gradually closed.
The “criminally insane,” “non-rehabilitateable,” etc had always been involuntarily “warehoused” in these large institutions. These hospitals were considered more humane than prisons, and they simultaneously kept dangerous people out of general circulation, where they had a demonstrated history of hurting themselves and others.
The supposed idea behind this “shift” was that large state asylum were “impersonally detached,” this fantasy was promulgated by the 1975 feature film, “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” starring Jack Nicholson. In the film, mentally ill residents are depicted as routinely abused by cynical/sadistic doctors and nurses.
“Local” hospitals and other facilities were imagined to be more able to properly care for these legions of the mentally ill. Most, it was naively imagined by half-witted politicians, could even be “main-streamed!”
It all sounded like a good, money-saving idea, but reality fell far short of naive expectation, as it always does.
The brutal fact is that no one wants these people, and for sure no one wants to pay for their upkeep!
Hospitals don’t want them. Hospitals kick them out as soon as they can. Their own families don’t want them. In fact, their families know first-hand just how dangerous they are and want nothing to do with them.
So, what has happened is that the dangerously insane, much “insanity” being drug-induced, have mostly ended up out on the street, where they cannot take care of themselves and where they continue to endanger everyone around them and only rarely receive any kind of treatment.
Often using deadly weapons, they routinely attack responding police and sometimes innocent citizens and are often shot and killed in the process.
They represent a significant role in our nation’s current violent crime crisis.
Thus, as is the usual result when politicians get involved, the “cure” has demonstrated itself to be far worse than the “disease!”
“Strange as it may seem, no amount of learning can cure stupidity, and formal education positively fortifies it” ~ Stephen Vizinczey.
/John
About John Farnam & Defense Training International, Inc
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Now, let me present the gorilla in the room. Living in kommiefornia, I know first hand what part of the problem was in the institution near Napa. Women were being used as sex slaves and getting pregnant and I am sure some of the men were keeping Paul Pelosi and other democrap LGBTQ and NAMBA happy too when they couldn’t use little boys from Boy Scouts of America. They would keep them doped up so they could have their way with them. There were problems with escapes too. I don’t approve of what Ronnie and the rest of America did.… Read more »
Institutional warehousing of patients wasn’t the best solution but it was better, for all concerned, than doing nothing and letting people fend for themselves. These folks are unable and unaware of what is needed to suvrive and prosper in society. I think it was better to try to address our problems than to ignore mental instability and criminality.
REALITY CHECK: It wasn’t started by Reagan. That comment is another anti-Reagan ‘trope’. De-institutionalization of the mentally ill started in 1965. In the backdrop of the 1960s and 1970s there was a rise in the community health movement as a response to deinstitutionalization efforts in health care. Coinciding with a movement during the 1970s for rehabilitation of people with severe mental illnesses, the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was signed by Jimmy Carter, supported and financed community mental health support systems, which coordinated general health care, mental health care, and social support services.[2] Before this movement gained momentum, mentally ill… Read more »
Resolve mental illness.
Mommas don”t let your babies grow up to be Democrats.
When aliens cruise past Earth, they lock their doors……
The mentally ill are on the streets due to a supreme court ruling years ago. There primary reason they, mentally ill, go to CA is three fold. Free handouts with no requirements, temperate weather, and drug.
Ron White put it more succinctly. “You can’t fix stupid.”
here is a possible solution, swift and severe punishment, a.k.a. the death penalty, for convicted murderers and others that are not able to be rehabilitated a.k.a. recidivists. why should we pay for people who cannot live peacefully in civil society.
that would allow money to fund the psychiatric hospitals needed for people that need the help. and if they, the mentally ill, continue to terrorize the citizenry by not acting in a responsible and civil manner they should be imprisoned also. the lack of personal responsibility and punishment is why we are at this point.
This article is worthless! What was the point? You presented no solutions. What a waste of space!