Under Reagan there was a national de-institutionalization of mentally ill people, who largely ended up as the multitude of homeless vagrants who occupy urban scenes across the country.
No, no, a thousand times no. A vicious libel, connected to the "fact" that the homeless are an issue when the President is a Republican, and almost entirely disappear when he's a Democrat (I don't remember it happening to Nixon, but per the timeline below this wouldn't be contributing; the 60's judicial nullification of anti-vagrancy laws also obviously contributed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy_(people)#United_State...).
As mentioned by tokenadult, who's an older type like myself, this really got into action with JFK's Community Mental Health Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_Mental_Health_Act) and had a medical basis in effective treatments for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder that required the institutionalization of "hopeless" patients (something my mother witnessed as an RN in the 1950s; note that the study/studies behind this started in the mid-50s). It was pretty much finished by the time he became president.
There's also no way the institutions could have been closed down so fast as to create the "Reaganomics creates homelessness!" headlines et. al., which happened rather quickly.
Yes, it began with the CMHA, but it was under Reagan's presidency that the people who really should not have been de-institutionalized (ie, not the older people with dementia/etc who were returned to their homes and families during the first wave of CMHA, and instead the younger people with very serious mental illness and no support system), were. This is very well documented in the book American Psychosis by Torrey if you're interested in the facts.
As I mentioned above, between my mother and myself, we were there, we lived through the whole period in which the existing system was systematically dismantled and we know the facts from following "current events". My mom's something of a junkie for that, more than a bit of which rubbed off on me; while this was not a major focus of her's, it got her interest when a while after 3 months of residency in a psych ward, she returned to work as an RN Nurse Anesthetist and saw one of her "hopeless" cases doing janitorial or orderly work there. After thousands of years of hopelessness, this was an earthshaking thing.
Sure, some was done after Reagan became president (heck, it continues today, my Missouri Democratic governor is shutting down an institution for the mentally retarded not too far north), but you're going to have to do better than a book published in 2013 that couldn't pass the gatekeepers without blaming it on that devil Reagan.
You're really going to claim that few of the latter, the very ones with the diseases we started effectively treating in the '50s, true miracles that prompted a Federal rethinking of our approach starting in that decade, somehow continued to be warehoused until 1980???
I think this is a case where Wikipedia is not a sufficient source (wonderful though the website is). While I respect you and your mother's experiences, I prefer published evidence over anecdotal. I'll refer you to the book rather than continue this thread: http://goo.gl/yjKGxj
You're confusing two things we're providing witness of:
My mother's anecdotal experience with the revolution of treatment of schizophrenia with anti-psychotics in the '50s, which merely dovetails with the Federal government also recognizing that this deserved a serious rethink of how we treat these formerly "hopeless" cases.
Our non-anecdotal watching of current events as this good impulse was totally botched over the next N decades.
E.g. I suppose it's an "anecdote" that I read not that long ago that the state is shutting down an institution for the mentally retarded a bit to the north of me, but that's not using the word in the way you mean.
Anyway, for us, "published 'evidence'" that per your statements contradicts the facts as we contemporaneously observed them, and for obvious political motives, is less than interesting. Especially when there are so many good, honest accounts of this out there.
You will find that most if not all of the homeless became that way after they became mentally ill and there was no or very little support available for them.
If you want to end homelessness you have to bring back a mental health system that supports the mentally ill, helps them make house payments, and can train them for new jobs when they lose them.
All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent. This is, of course, not true. But news media makes popular opinion out there. If something is popular, it does not make it true.
All of these public shootings done by mentally ill people represent less than 1% of the mentally ill population, but the news media takes delight in vilifying the mentally ill as all being violent.
If you factor out drug use, the mentally ill population isn't more dangerous than anyone else.
I don't think that the media intentionally vilifies the mentally ill. Instead, I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior. "He must be one sick fuck." It's much easier to explain human badness in terms of illness than to confront the more complex truths: (a) sometimes good or average people do bad things, and (b) some people are just horrible.
If you start concluding that all extremely violent people are mentally ill (which is probably false) and use the flawed (A -> B) -> (B -> A) thinking that passes for logic among many people, you start thinking of mentally ill people as all potentially violent.
I think that people in general seek mental illness as a partial explanation for extreme violent behavior.
Arguably: someone who's violent has a psychological disorder.
However several of the psychological disorders most associated with extreme violence or antisocial tendencies also leave the subject in a very high-functioning state. They can also be frustratingly resistant to any sort of treatment (drug, talk, or other therapies).
Lack of empathy is often not nearly as debilitating as hearing voices and seeing visions.
Lack of empathy is usually when one is a sociopath not suffering from schizophrenia or autism.
The problem is some people on the autism or schizophrenia spectrums cannot express themselves, but they have empathy and compassion, but are misunderstood by society and the news media. They just lack social skills and people skills, but can be taught them by books and therapy. Most are even nonviolent and very good people if only they were understood.
Sort of like Sherlock Holmes, only Doctor Watson seemed to be able to understand him, everyone else misunderstood him and didn't want anything to do with him because they thought he was a mean jerk with no empathy. He had empathy but got rid of distractions to focus on solving crimes to save humanity from evils like Professor Moriarty and his gangs of sociopaths.
I always see people using 'sociopath' as different from 'psycopath', and I also see people claim they mean the same thing, and I also see people say that neither are used anymore, technically speaking (as in psychiatrists). Anyone with formal training on the area would be kind to briefly (or not) clear this up?
See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychopathy_or_sociopathy and in general also note the WHO's International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems (ICD), which could be a less intensely political artifact than the US DSM.
The story that gets portrayed in the media of mentally ill people being a major danger to the general public is just that - a story. The facts don't back it up.
Even if it were the case that the violent and dangerous criminals were suffering from mental illness, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to strive to provide access to treatment for mental illness than just villify those who suffer from it?
