What Caused This Problem?
State run mental hospitals across this country “warehoused” people with mental illnesses segregating them from mainstream society under horrible sanitary conditions. These people were often disowned and forgotten by their families. Even after death many families never claimed their loved ones and often times people with mental illness where buried in unmarked graves on the hospital grounds. These individuals were both forgotten about in life and in death.
In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s a national push came about to close these institutions due to the less than humane conditions and mainstream people with mental illness. This allowed mentally ill individuals to once again become part of society and gave them their dignity back as human beings.
Deinstitutionalization allowed a large proportion of individuals with serious mental disorders to live successfully in their community.
Unfortunately however, a sizable minority of people who in the past would have been treated in state hospitals has instead ended up in nursing homes, homeless shelters, jails and prisons. A 1998 report from the U. S. Department of Justice estimated the nation’s jails and prisons held 283,800 mentally ill inmates, representing 16% of state prison inmates, 7% of federal inmates and 16% of those in local jails. In excess of 90 percent of the homeless in this country are people suffering from mental illness who are incapable of getting or maintaining treatment for their mental disorder on their own.
