What happened to the mental institution?
Dr. Clif Tennison is the main subject of this piece. Dr. Tennison says, “We closed down the hospitals and (the patients) ended up in the jails.” Many people, when they learn that many people who are chronically homeless are mentally ill, ask why we don’t “reopen” Lakeshore. Dr. Tennison answers that question. The policy initiative that led to the current crisis — called de-institutionalization — began in the 1960s as a response to endemic problems in mental hospitals, Tennison explained. Officials were working under the incorrect assumption that then-new drugs would cure psychoses, and they also were dealing with both skyrocketing costs and allegations of inhumane treatment. Their response was to all but shut down the system of mental asylums that housed the country’s mentally ill, a mistake that’s been compounded by subsequent budget cuts for public mental health care. In Knoxville, for instance, Lakeshore Hospital went from being a 2,000-bed asylum to a facility that today has less t
