-Caveat Lector-
On Thu, 7 Jan 1999, Sno0wl wrote:
>> But we can't forget it was 'Liberals' who decided that previously
>> institutionalized people suffering from mental illness should be
>> 'mainstreamed' into society, with the result that these people were
>> released from the institutions with nowhere to go, and no support
>> network....
>
>Which was preceded by exposes such as the film "Willowbrook " which
>revealed horrendous and shocking abuses at said institutions. What
>happened in between the closing of those institutions and the opening
>of shelters and the creation of networks? Ah yes-- a Bush
>administration.
No, it all happened well before 1988...the institutionalized mentally ill
were mainstreamed well before "Willowbrook", due to the flower-child
mentality of the 60s that people should be 'free'...a process that was
hastened by the introduction of what were considered 'magic bullet'
wonder drugs to treat the mentally ill...it was naively thought that
these previously institutionalized people would just automatically keep
up with their meds when not under constant supervision...
I agree that many of these institutions were houses of horror...but some
were not, we had a couple here in Connecticut that were like country
clubs, which attracted many of the rich and famous along with those whome
the state sent...
By the late 70s, most of these facilities were empty, operating as day
houses if they stayed open at all...
The problem that none of these PhD's foresaw was the fact that most of
these previously institutionalized patients had little, if any, job
skills...many did not have families to turn to...definitely no monetary
resources...so what were they to do? Where were they to go?
A few lucky ones who were 'together' enough to figure out a game plan
made it to programs that provided them a temporary shelter as it taught
them job skills and helped them find jobs...but for the vast majority,
they ended up on the street, unable or unwilling to take their meds
(presuming what they'd been prescribed worked in the long run,
anyways)....
Unfortunately, just when these people needed publicly funded programs for
shelter and job training the most, the Reagan Administration gutted the
programs...
So it's a case of 'a pox on both your houses' -- the mentally ill were
deinstitutionalized under a relatively liberal attitude (laudable, if
naive), that they'd be better off outside an institution, an attitude
that resulted from rose-colored blinders, of not evaluating what the LONG
term results to the patients would be, and to plan accordingly...and then
those who were deinstitutionalized fell victim to the conservative
gutting of social welfare programs...
>And a general explosion of the not-in-my-backyard
>syndrome among the less-than-liberal public as it raced toward yuppie
>excess dreaming of riches and power.
Yes, but that happened circa 1980, not 1988...
June
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The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods, and meadows brown and sear.
-- Wm. Cullen Bryant: The Death of the Flowers
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