Ronald Reagan decimated the mental health system in this country..

[boston bean]

There are no beds to treat persons, there are few hospitals offering the services.. State hospitals are basically extinct...

Do I think persons who have been diagnosed with a mental illness all belong in a hospital, no? Do I think they are responsible for all gun violence, no?

I do however think there is a link between many of the mass shootings that take place and mental illness and aggrieved males (their grievances causing exacerbation of their illness) who if they did not have access to guns, these killings would not take place.

If there were no guns, we wouldn't even have to think about this, and that would be my preference. But alas, that will not ever be the case.

I'm for people being able to access treatment. I am also for families being able to get help for their loved ones.

Ronald Reagan really screwed the pooch in this area. I know there were problems with the system, but the problems weren't fixed, the system was just decimated.

[MineralMan]

1. He started that in California, while he was governor.

The state hospital system in CA was horrible, of course, and people were trying very hard to reform it. Lots of people went basically untreated, with sedatives used to drug them into being completely passive. Reagan's solution was to shut it down and switch to "community care" provided by counties. Trouble was, no funding was available, so many counties simply gave lip service to providing mental health care.

That carried through to other states. Now, our main mental health care system for people in crisis is made up of our jails and prisons. There's still no money, and now, there are few, if any facilities to provide care. The whole system is useless for people who need, but cannot afford care, so they end up on the streets or in jails. It sucks!

Ronald Reagan was a horrible Governor and a worse President.

[boston bean]

3. Yep, one of his many horrendous legacies.

And he used the concerns regarding the system to shut them down, without any alternative that was remotely possible.

All, to cut the budget.... It was one of the worst things he ever did as president, that I can think of.

[Nye Bevan]

5. Not sure it's accurate to say that "Reagan started that".

California has traditionally been on the cutting edge of American cultural developments, with Anaheim and Modesto experiencing changes before Atlanta and Moline. This was also true in the exodus of patients from state psychiatric hospitals. Beginning in the late 1950s, California became the national leader in aggressively moving patients from state hospitals to nursing homes and board-and-care homes, known in other states by names such as group homes, boarding homes, adult care homes, family care homes, assisted living facilities, community residential facilities, adult foster homes, transitional living facilities, and residential care facilities. Hospital wards closed as the patients left. By the time Ronald Reagan assumed the governorship in 1967, California had already deinstitutionalized more than half of its state hospital patients. That same year, California passed the landmark Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) Act, which virtually abolished involuntary hospitalization except in extreme cases. Thus, by the early 1970s California had moved most mentally ill patients out of its state hospitals and, by passing LPS, had made it very difficult to get them back into a hospital if they relapsed and needed additional care. California thus became a canary in the coal mine of deinstitutionalization.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/29/ronald_reagans_shameful_legacy_violence_the_homeless_mental_illness/

[yeoman6987]

7. 35 years ago and two 8-year democratic presidents later

And don't say but the congress? Heck the congress was 40-years straight democratic until 1995. Blame to go around. Open the mental hospitals to more beds really shouldn't have been difficult.

[handmade34]

2. good read...

http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

Under the Reagan Administration, groups and individuals who had hoped for a change found that the federal government did very little to effect a change. The appointment of conservative justices for the federal court system was a part of the "law and or der" platform advocated by the administration and thus was never intended to have a direct effect on procedures regarding involuntary commitment or any other aspect of mental health policy.

Perhaps what is most interesting about the change in policies of involuntary commitment is the coalition that helped bring it about: a combination of "law and order" conservatives, economic conservatives, and liberal groups that sought reform in the provision of mental health services. But the policy shift had hardly anything at all to do with the mentally ill or the practitioners who treated them. It was designed to lower taxes and shift responsibility away from the federal government. Ironically then , the need for reform perceived by those involved and concerned with the mentally ill (practitioners and families) was co-opted by the interests of capital.

[Brainstormy]

4. As John Oliver pointed out . . .

The vast number of shootings are NOT committed by the mentally ill. The mentally ill are much more likely to be victims of gun violence than perpetrators of it. That being said, you're exactly right about Reagan.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/john-oliver-mental-health_56124040e4b076812702757e

[Faux pas]

6. I was in Calif

when raygun f-ed the state up. When he closed the mental hospitals, the number of homeless people really multiplied then. St Ronnie my wild liberal ass!

[tishaLA]

9. I watched a documentary. Lost Angels: MY Home on Skid Row...

and the director of one of the homeless agencies said--I think correctly--that the Twin Towers (LA County Jail) is the largest mental health facility in the world. We have gone from treating mental illness to criminalizing it and treating homelessness as a symptom of its criminality.

[Vinca]

8. My husband and I were just talking about this.

We both worked at a psychiatric hospital for a time and remember the wholesale ousting of people who needed hospitalization. They're still around, of course, only they're living under bridges and in jails. We can't hold them responsible for their violent acts because voices might be telling them to do it or some other severe issue. Background checks won't stop them from buying guns unless they've been arrested or deemed mentally ill by a court of law. That said, the gun issue is not necessarily a mental health problem. That's what the NRA has decided the talking point should be in these cases. Sane people murder each other every day of the week.