Everyone continues to decry that we have a mental health problem in this country, as though we haven’t always had mental health problems here and throughout the world.
At one time, most states in the USA had mental health institutions to care for those who were criminally insane or a threat to themselves or others. They didn’t deserve prison, by any stretch of the imagination, but they could not be allowed to be a threat to the general population and the quality of life normal people expect to have in their communities.
In Georgia, the nation’s once largest in number mental health institutions was located in central Georgia in a town called Milledgeville.
When I was a child growing up in Augusta, all Georgians would jokingly say to someone they were calling crazy by saying “you belong in Milledgeville!”
I think that it was during the Reagan administration that it was deemed that it was cruel and unusual punishment to locked up certain people into mental health institutions against their will. These institutions were emptied and closed.
Where did their residents go? For the most part, out into the street living as homeless men and women addicted to various substances and anti-social. Among these were the criminally insane.
The first time I noticed how bad things were getting is when I was sent to our Cathedral in downtown Savanah in 1985. The homeless problem was terrible and the mentally ill and others addicted to drugs and alcohol was unbelievable becoming pan handlers, living in the foyers of business closed for the night where they urinated and left excrement. I even found excrement in the narthex of our Cathedral, and yes I cleaned it up! These people, at one time, would have been sent to and living in Milledgeville, but no more.
Today’s homelessness crisis as well as so-called mental health crisis is a result of closing institiutions for the “insane” and those a threat to themselves, to others and the quality of life of communities.
Just think of all the homeless camps on the streets of so many Democrat cities, like San Francisco but also other major and minor cities. They think allowing those who can’t care for themselves to live on the streets is better than the cruelty of a mental health institution.
A description and very brief history of Georgia’s now closed Mental Health Institution in Milledgeville, once the largest in the country:
In continuous operation since accepting its first patient in December 1842, the hospital was founded as the Georgia State Lunatic, Idiot, and Epileptic Asylum, and was also known as the Georgia State Sanitarium and Milledgeville State Hospital during its long history. By the 1960s the facility had grown into the largest mental hospital in the world (contending with Pilgrim Psychiatric Center in New York). Its landmark Powell Building and the vast, abandoned 1929 Jones Building stand among some 200 buildings on two thousand acres that once housed nearly 12,000 patients.[2]
In 1960, journalist Jack Nelson of The Atlanta Constitution received the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for exposing abuses at the hospital.
The hospital population grew to nearly 12,000 in the 1960s. During the following decade, the population began to decrease due to the emphasis on de-institutionalization, the addition of other public psychiatric (regional) hospitals throughout the state, the availability of psychotropic medications, an increase in community mental health programs, and many individuals moving to community living arrangements. During FY2004–FY2005, the hospital served more than 9,000 consumers (duplicates counted) – from nearly every Georgia county.
In 2010, the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities announced that the hospital would be closed.[5]
2 comments:
I could see this being the basis for a bipartisan approach. Turning out the mentally ill to suffer on the streets is hardly compassionate or respectful of their dignity, while I have to wonder about all of the patent and latent expenses of doing so, rather than institutionalizing those that need to be institutionalized. Safeguards are needed, surely, to avoid institutionalizing those who should not be, but the moves in the 1980s were an overcorrection, from what I know of the subject.
Of course, in our toxic modern politics, I may be whistling into the wind. As soon as Trump moves one way, his supporters will hold to that with the tenacity of a dog on a rope, and his opponents will do the same in the opposite direction. But one can dream...
Nick
In the uk we have secure hospitals, basically hospitals run by the health service with prison level security eg Broadmoor. Depending on psychiatric reports at the sentencing (disposal) stage you can be placed under a hospital order where you are supervised by a psychiatric team for compulsory medication and have access to psychological therapies which you must complete. It’s not an easier option than prison as it’s indefinite until you are deemed no longer to be a risk when you can be sent back to prison to complete the remainder of your sentence or go through the parole process for supervised discharge and resettlement in the community. Once released back to the community, you’re usually placed in supported living placements and can be recalled back to prison / hospital if you don’t comply with stipulated requirements ie attend hospital appts / medication / bans from entering the area you committed your crime etc.
Those deemed unable to stand trial ie the criminally insane are also diverted to the secure hospitals under the mental health act.
America seems to be a free for all. Unless criminals are supported in their community upon release they are bound to be pushed back into old habits and a life of crime to survive.
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