No offense, but mental institutions were/are horror farms. Could have been better, should have been better, never was.
Among the highest, if not the foremost rate of undeclared abuse. Dumping grounds for the unwanted, unrestricted experimentations for sadistic monsters, no-man’s-land for the so-called human rights.
Whatever other evil might have been done, putting an end to those mental institutions can only be a kindness.
I’m lucky (unlucky?) enough to have worked at a day program for special needs and some of our clients were old enough to have been in institutions, released “to the wild” and then reintegrated into the modern system.
The ones capable of remembering and verbalizing their experiences had some wild stories, and while instutuons were often hell, being kicked out on the streets with no options was worse.
Like, it would be if Biden announced he was fixing the issues with our healthcare system by outlawing medical care.
Sure, the existing system sucks and in a lot of ways it’s good it’s gone…
But for fucks sake it was better than literally nothing.
That’s not even getting into how it demonized mental illness and led to people in rural areas still refusing to get children diagnosed because the label is what they’re afraid of. Because all they know about mental illness is all the desperate homeless people Reagan released and they passed those biases down to their children
There were always options. People didn’t take them due to lack of knowledge or of care. And as easy as it is to blame one person for it, truth is we’re all at fault. We as the populace lack the unity and desire to help one another as we should.
You say something was better than nothing. Well, nothing stopped us/them from building a better something else. That was always an option.
Most of their funding was state/local too and in decline well before Reagan due to the effect of the book (and later, movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
No offense, but mental institutions were/are horror farms. Could have been better, should have been better, never was.
Among the highest, if not the foremost rate of undeclared abuse. Dumping grounds for the unwanted, unrestricted experimentations for sadistic monsters, no-man’s-land for the so-called human rights.
Whatever other evil might have been done, putting an end to those mental institutions can only be a kindness.
I’m lucky (unlucky?) enough to have worked at a day program for special needs and some of our clients were old enough to have been in institutions, released “to the wild” and then reintegrated into the modern system.
The ones capable of remembering and verbalizing their experiences had some wild stories, and while instutuons were often hell, being kicked out on the streets with no options was worse.
Like, it would be if Biden announced he was fixing the issues with our healthcare system by outlawing medical care.
Sure, the existing system sucks and in a lot of ways it’s good it’s gone…
But for fucks sake it was better than literally nothing.
That’s not even getting into how it demonized mental illness and led to people in rural areas still refusing to get children diagnosed because the label is what they’re afraid of. Because all they know about mental illness is all the desperate homeless people Reagan released and they passed those biases down to their children
There were always options. People didn’t take them due to lack of knowledge or of care. And as easy as it is to blame one person for it, truth is we’re all at fault. We as the populace lack the unity and desire to help one another as we should.
You say something was better than nothing. Well, nothing stopped us/them from building a better something else. That was always an option.
Most of their funding was state/local too and in decline well before Reagan due to the effect of the book (and later, movie) One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.