The Deinstitutionalization of the Mental Health System

The deinstitutionalization of the mental health or the mental hospitals in the early 60s was supposed to be because we're going to have community mental health centers for people. Some people got along really well and some people, particularly people that had families that sort of could help them out, could do pretty well. But unfortunately, there are some people who were very profoundly mentally ill who didn't respond well to medication when their families couldn't deal with them. There weren't any mental facilities to help them. So we end up dumping all of these mentally ill people into the criminal courts. And I always say that the largest mental institution in any community is the local jail of all these mentally ill