Why are so many mentally ill people ending up behind bars? Who is to blame?
Most experts agree that the increasing number of imprisoned mentally ill people is due to two major policy shifts over the past decades. One was deinstitutionalization, or the process of closing down mental hospitals throughout the country that began in the 1950s. The idea was that the mentally ill would do better living back in the community with a community-based mental health care system in place to handle their needs. But adequate funding, coordination and commitment didn’t follow this change and the lack of resources and commitment to a community-based system of care continues to be a problem in the vast majority of American communities. This excerpt on the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill from Dr. E. Fuller Torrey’s book Out of the Shadows: Confronting America’s Mental Illness Crisis includes a chart showing the deinstitutionalization rate for each state between 1955 and 1994. The other policy shift behind the rise in mentally ill behind bars was the tougher sentencing
Most experts agree that the increasing number of imprisoned mentally ill people is due to two major policy shifts over the past decades. One was deinstitutionalization, or the process of closing down mental hospitals throughout the country that began in the 1950s. The idea was that the mentally ill would do better living back in the community with a community-based mental health care system in place to handle their needs. But adequate funding, coordination and commitment didn’t follow this change and the lack of resources and commitment to a community-based system of care continues to be a problem in the vast majority of American communities. This excerpt on the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill from Dr. E. Fuller Torrey’s book Out of the Shadows: Confronting America’s Mental Illness Crisis includes a chart showing the deinstitutionalization rate for each state between 1955 and 1994. The other policy shift behind the rise in mentally ill behind bars was the tougher sentencing
