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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
This problem started back when Reagan decided to get people out of mental institutions. They all went to the streets. I remember it well as I was starting a career in Chicago. Most Americans had never heard the word "homeless" before that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_Health_Systems_Act_of_1980

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Back when all the esteemed psychiatrists advised us that these people would be fine because of medications and should live freely. Very sadly, their lives would be much better if they were taken care of through required long-term hospitalization or group homes, rather than living on the streets. [/quote]

Yup, it's always 'Reagan's fault!' when there were so many progressives back then foaming at the mouth that it was cruel and inhumane to lockup people with mental problems in govt institutions. Liberals all told us they would be fine living in the world on their own. [/quote]
? no, that's not what happened. They wanted the mentally ill to be in locally controlled facilities with federally funding, but Reagan gutted the federal funds for the state run institutions.

Read the history of what happened.

https://www.kqed.org/news/11209729/did-the-emptying-of-mental-hospitals-contribute-to-homelessness-here

[quote]1981 President Reagan repeals Carter’s legislation with the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act. This pushes the responsibility of mentally ill patients back to the states. The legislation creates block grants for the states, but federal spending on mental illness declines. [/quote][/quote]

Yes, it is exactly what happened. You clearly only think these things were passed in a vacuum and not in the historical context of the Willowbrook State School report that broke out describing all of the 'horrors' at state run institutions that left a long lasting negative view of mental institutions. That's precisely the same kind of background that was behind the one flew over the cuckoos nest. Based on the outrage, it was actually John F Kennedy and his  Community Mental Health Act of 1963, a part of John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" social programs, that led to a lot of deinstitutionalization. His policy had an immediate and dramatic effect. In his message regarding his new program,  Kennedy set a quantitative target for this effort: a reduction by 50% or more of the number of patients then under custodial care, within ten or twenty years . In reality, the process of "deinstitutionalization" proceeded even more quickly and more extensively than that. By 1975, the number of patients in state and county mental hospitals had declined by 62% from the time of the President's message (65% from the peak of 559,000 in 1955). Falling further still over the next decade, the institutional census contracted to 110,000 in 1985 (NIMH 1989) despite growth in the US population and irrespective of the increasing number of mental hospital admissions over much of this period.

Carter tried to address the severe problem that Democrats and JFK started, true. And Reagan made the mistake of removing federal funding for mental institutions, which were under control of states, true. But all of this started loooooooong before Carter and Reagan got into office.  It was really JFK who opened the floodgates for deinstitutionalization and who started all of the problems with our mental healthcare.  The Willowbrook scandal had a lot of lasting impact, which people who only look at Reagan woefully ignore. [/quote]
Whatever Kennedy did, it was not to kill off the federal funds for mental health hospitals, nor did he push off the responsibility to the states.  He wanted to actually create more humane mental hospitals.

[quote]1963 President John F. Kennedy signs the Community Mental Health Act. This pushes the responsibility of mentally ill patients from the state toward the federal government. JFK wanted to create a network of community mental health centers where mentally ill people could live in the community while receiving care. JFK could have been inspired to act because his younger sister, Rosemary, was mentally disabled, received a lobotomy and spent her life hidden away.

Less than a month after signing the new legislation, JFK is assassinated. The community mental health centers never receive stable funding, and even 15 years later less than half the promised centers are built.[/quote]

Historically, people with mental disability were put in mental institutions rather than care homes.  That's what he was trying to prevent.  He did not want full scale de-institutionalization, which you are trying to make it out to be.[/quote]

Except that's exactly what JFK's policies led to - virtually full scale deinstitutionalization after the Willowbrook scandal.  Facts are facts.

Whether or not deinstitutionalization was intended doesn't matter, the results in the end showed that's exactly what happened because of JFK.  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  The US' mental health problems started looooong before Carter and Reagan because of JFK's policies in response to Willowbrook.[/quote]
Certainly, Reagan made it a lot worse.

I used to live in LA, and recall when Reagan closed down the mental institutions which flooded skid row.

Whatever intentions a Dem leaders has, it is not to defund a healthcare crisis. That is what Rs like to do.[/quote]

Makes not sense to judge politicians on their "intentions." Let facts and trillions of dollars speak for themselves -- Reagan died decades ago, Dems are experts at making the bad ten times worse.[/quote]

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