2. It was a huge mistake to close all mental health institutions and dump those people on the general populace where far too many never receive any treatment, many commit crimes and many now reside in our prisons. Bleeding heart liberals made it far too difficult to commit anyone for mental problems and have made it nearly impossible to identify people with such issues, thus making background checks virtually meaningless.
It is time to admit this was all wrong and and start over from scratch in how we deal with mental health. Part of that rethinking needs to include new mental health institutions, and part of reducing the stigma of mental health needs to include making these records available to the background check systems.
This DU-member probably buys into the false narrative that, "Reagan emptied and shut down the mental hospitals." It's an allusion to Reagan's terms as Governor of California, which obviously does not include the other 49 states. But there are indeed fewer mental hospitals, in all 50 states. What actually took place?
Way back in the 1950s (1940s?) the narrative took hold that the vast majority of mental patients could control their conditions through newly created drugs, administered by community-based clinics. Books (and other media) such as
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest supported this narrative by creating the public image that
ALL mental hospitals were cruel place run and staffed by sadists.
Congress passed and
Eisenhower signed into law laws mandating this. I'm not blaming Eisenhower or Congress, just emphasizing the source and time-frame in which this was begun. So governors of various states started mainstreaming mental patients into society and setting up the community-based clinics.
I think we know now, several decades later, how well that idea - that mental patients with little experience in living in society would be self-supporting and take their meds regularly as prescribed - turned out.
In California, it was Governor Edmund "Pat" Brown - Reagan's predecessor - who set this process in motion. Reagan continued this process, including laying of many mental hospital staff and shutting some down, but the D-controlled legislature who had been carrying out the process for nearly a decade suddenly got compassion-religion and made a big stink about it. That is how the, "Reagan emptied and shut down the mental hospitals," narrative began. Contrary to the narrative, not all CA mental hospitals were clossed during Reagan's governorship. Per
this list CA has 9 mental hospitals.
Not that facts matter in LibLand or neighboring ProgLand.