My basic understanding is the U.S. replaced mental health asylums and orphanages with homelessness and prisons. What do other countries do? Does it work?
To be clear, that was not the motivation. There were lots of reasons why things changed and institutionalization fell out of favor (and not just in the US, but across the West). For example, right now, in most states, you couldn't forcibly institutionalize, say, a schizophrenic homeless individual legally, even if the request came from the individual's family. And if you try, municipal and state governments, bolstered by activists and rights organizations will fight you.
Ignoring that, what other motivation do the people denying health care to the mentally ill supposedly have?
They throw the mentally ill in prison to avoid providing care, so any argument that it’s for the welfare of the mentally ill is a hard sell.
The people I’ve met working to help these people universally express dismay at the fact that the law sets them up for failure.
Some institutionalized patients stabilized not because they had prescriptions or therapy appointments, but because they were coerced to actually take the meds and show up at the therapy appointments. Subject to lights-out at a reasonable hour. Denied access to alcohol and recreational drugs. Etc.
Either way, our current understanding is that these were gross violations of medical ethics and human rights. We locked people up who had not been convicted of any crime. We confined people indefinitely who had only been convicted of nuisance crimes. We took people who had the capacity to understand the medical care they were being offered, and we didn't care what they had to say about it.
It doesn't matter how expedient any of this was for society or for the patients, it was wrong. We are as likely to walk this back as we are to re-normalize sexual harassment or slavery or something.
It was wrong to provide a place, staffed by clinical professionals, providing professional healthcare, and regulated by government agencies? Uh huh.
Well, I'm glad you feel all that was 'wrong', because apparently what replaced it, mentally ill people living in squalor, exposed to the elements and diseases, in makeshift shanty-towns ... that's been a real improvement. A homeless individual suffering from schizophrenia and unable to make rational decisions, I'm sure he appreciates you fighting for his right to live in squalor.
Unbelievable.
> It was just kept out of your sight.
That's what we have now. Homeless, and homeless encampments are so normal in progressives cities, it's like background noise. You'll literally step-over a sleeping homeless on your way to work without a second thought (and I can guarantee you do that every day, if you live in one of those cities). Sorry ... I forgot, we're protecting their rights to not receive institutional care.
"Pretty sure"? That's a some standard of evidence. Care to expand on that .. maybe with with something other than "I thought about it real hard and I can't think of anything else it could be"?
new yorker cartoon - remember, we're not just making money, we're building prisons.