Day: March 31, 2016

                                      Vanished

From Truthout:

“In many communities, jails have become the only option for police confronted with a person in mental health crisis in public…

The reason behind this is obvious: the virtual shutdown of the nation’s public mental health care system for which Dorothea Dix fought. From 1970 to 2002, the per capita number of public mental health hospital beds plummeted from 207 per 100,000 to 20 per 100,000…

The plan was to dismantle large, often punitive mental institutions and replace them with community-based facilities that would have a more patient-centered ethos. Unfortunately, these closures took place at a moment when neo-liberalism was on the rise. In the name of fiscal responsibility, most states simply did not replace mental health institutions. In many instances, jails became the quick fix to handle poor people who had mental health crises and no access…