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Thank you. To be fair, I don’t think it’s enlrgby that is saying Reagan closed mental hospitals. It’s the Leftists claiming that and enlrgby is just presuming the Leftist claim is factual, which as you pointed out, is actually not factual.
This is what I am referring to:
1. In 1967, Reagan (as governor of California) signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act which made it essentially impossible to even treat (let alone hospitalize) a mentally ill person without the person's consent.
2. In 1980, Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act, which authorized funding of community mental health centers. While there were huge pressures against psychiatric treatment from groups supporting "freedom" of the mentally ill to live in the community and do whatever they wanted, no matter how dangerous, these community psych centers could have at least to some extent alleviated the problem of closure of mental hospitals in all states that resulted from state legislations similar to the Lanterman Act in California. But in 1981, Reagan (who by then moved up from governor to president) repealed most of the Mental Health Systems Act, except the section that guarantees patient autonomy in deciding whether he accepts or refuses treatment.
These measures equaled closing of mental hospitals (since a mental hospital cannot remain open if it has no patients) and defunding of psych services. So yes, I do think Reagan closed/defunded mental hospitals. But as I also pointed out, these measures came about in the setting of a great push from the ultra-left groups advocating "freedom" from treatment and hospitalization for the mentally ill. Conservatives shrugged their shoulders and said "fine, if you don't want psych treatment and hospitalization, we'll pull the funding out of it; surely suits us".
But that is where things stood 40+ years ago. The ultra-left are still against mandatory psych treatment or hospitalization, no change since The Summer of Love 1967. But I am not sure why the centrists and conservatives are not countering that with anything, because I am sure they are by now aware of the tremendous problems that arose from essentially illegalizing psych treatment and hospitalization without patient consent, and then defunding the remaining psych services. Since, understandably, it makes no sense to fund psych institutions that nobody will use, the essential step would be to expand the authority of psych professionals to determine and implement the need to hospitalize dangerous patients against the patients' will. I would think even ACLU would come to its senses by now, since it is really peculiar to argue that sneaking into a young woman's home, and murdering her in a horrific fashion, is somebody's basic human right and a part of his constitutionally guaranteed freedom.
I don't really have a dog in the Dem/GOP fight, since I am a centrist and a swing voter, and I do not idolize any politician. Reagan had his good points, but not so much in how he dealt with handling mental illness.
Doesn't anyone remember Billie Boggs? In the 80s Ed Koch (D) was in favor of taking mentally ill off the streets. The ACLU sued using Billie Boggs, a crazy homeless lady, as their plaintiff. They succeeded. Thus the mentally ill are free to create all the havoc we are seeing today.
Edward Koch’s voice rises as he repeats the question addressed to him. He has been out of City Hall for more than a year, but her case still engages him.
″Why don’t you ask Norman SIEGEL where she is,″ asks the former mayor. Siegel is director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which helped Brown gain her freedom. ″Maybe he took her home to live with him.″
Joyce Brown is a short, wiry woman who was born into a working-class family in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1947. After high school she held several secretarial jobs, but became addicted to heroin and cocaine. She became argumentative and disorderly, and in 1986 she moved out of a sister’s home and hit the streets.
Post Script, also from the article: Her case was cited by President Reagan as an example of American freedom of choice...
Doesn't anyone remember Billie Boggs? In the 80s Ed Koch (D) was in favor of taking mentally ill off the streets. The ACLU sued using Billie Boggs, a crazy homeless lady, as their plaintiff. They succeeded. Thus the mentally ill are free to create all the havoc we are seeing today.
Edward Koch’s voice rises as he repeats the question addressed to him. He has been out of City Hall for more than a year, but her case still engages him.
″Why don’t you ask Norman SIEGEL where she is,″ asks the former mayor. Siegel is director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, which helped Brown gain her freedom. ″Maybe he took her home to live with him.″
Joyce Brown is a short, wiry woman who was born into a working-class family in Elizabeth, N.J., in 1947. After high school she held several secretarial jobs, but became addicted to heroin and cocaine. She became argumentative and disorderly, and in 1986 she moved out of a sister’s home and hit the streets.
Post Script, also from the article: Her case was cited by President Reagan as an example of American freedom of choice...
Well, that was an interesting and instructive reading :-). So, the article states that Billie Boggs ultimately ended up in a "long-term, supervised residence for mentally disturbed people" (and getting a disability check of $500 monthly in 1991, which would be a little over $1,000 today, maybe like $1,200), and she had stayed "out of trouble and off the streets", and in the article "psychiatrist Francine Cuornos asks: Isn't that what her case was all about?". Well, I would say that a "long-term supervised residence for mentally disturbed people" sounds like the correct definition of mental hospital, and if her case was all about placing her into an equivalent of mental hospital so she can stay out of trouble and off the streets, just what is the problem with reopening mental hospitals, and mandating hospitalization of people like Billie Boggs?
...Reagan (who by then moved up from governor to president) repealed most of the Mental Health Systems Act, except the section that guarantees patient autonomy in deciding whether he accepts or refuses treatment...
Here we go again. The president cannot repeal any legislation. That power is held by the congress.
Here we go again. The president cannot repeal any legislation. That power is held by the congress.
To be fair, this is mentioned as repealed in multiple sources like this one: "1981—President Ronald Reagan signed the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981. This act repealed the Mental Health Systems Act and consolidated ADAMHA's treatment and rehabilitation service programs into a single block grant that enabled each state to administer its allocated funds. With the repeal of the community mental health legislation and the establishment of block grants, the federal role in services to people with mentally illness became one of providing technical assistance to increase the capacity of state and local providers of mental health services.
Dr. Louis Sokoloff, an intramural NIMH researcher, received the Albert Lasker Award in Clinical Medical Research for developing a new method of measuring brain function that contributed to basic understanding and diagnosis of brain diseases. His technique, which measures the brain's use of glucose, made possible exciting new applications to positron emission tomography, or PET scanning, the first imaging technology that permitted scientists to "observe" and obtain visual images of the living, functioning brain.
Dr. Roger Sperry, a longtime NIMH research grantee, received the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology for discoveries regarding the functional specialization of the cerebral hemispheres, or the "left" and "right" brain."
So, he signed an act that repealed a previous act and turned it into a state matter.
I'm 62 years old, and I did not go to school (ie, not until the grad school level) in the US :-). So no, I was not fed this in the schools. I arrived in the US in 1983 when Reagan was president, so I do remember discussions about mental health. There was a wide opinion by almost everyone that mental hospitals were torture dungeons, and no danger was foreseen from releasing mental patients into the community, except that they might be neglected by their families and lost to medical followup. Of course a president can't do anything on his own, as there is a system of checks and balances, but presidents do routinely sign new acts into the law, or sign repeals of previous acts. In fact they do that with pretty much all federal acts, so you can't say Reagan did not repeal an act if he actually signed the repeal :-). Reagan was absolutely not in favor of mental hospitals. Conservatives and liberals in the US both support private freedoms, different ones to be sure, and for different reasons, but it really seemed at that time that they converged on agreeing about closing mental hospitals as violations of freedom of an individual. With a rear view of 40 years later, it does not seem as though that was a good decision. There should have been a better oversight of how patients were treated at these institutions, but the institutions should not have been closed.
Based on your posts, it is obvious you are a Democrat supporter. From another thread, it appears that the closures were a result of NYS being sued and thus under court order to close. You jumped on some googled article (that BTW is behind a paywall) because it fits your anti-Republican narrative.
Nonetheless, Democrats have held the position of power in NYS and NYC for quite a number of years now and the homeless and mentally ill problem has only gotten exponentially worse under their watch and they’ve had a chance to re-open the hospitals but they haven’t. Instead, they’ve blown billions on dubious programs like THRIVENYC.
incorrect again. i am not a democrat and am not anti-republican.
incorrect again. i am not a democrat and am not anti-republican.
Lies again. All your posts says differently.
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