It’s time to admit defeat. Deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill was a failed experiment in the United States, and for the safety of the majority of Americans and the recovery of the mentally ill, we need to bring back long-term psychiatric care facilities.
Ten years ago Dominic A. Sisti, PhD, Andrea G. Segal, MS, and Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, outlined the problem in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
"During the past half century, the supply of inpatient psychiatric beds in the United States has largely vanished," they explained.
They noted that in 1955, 560,000 patients received in-patient care in state psychiatric hospitals. But while the U.S. population had doubled in the 60 years since then, there were fewer than one-tenth that number of beds available: 45,000.
In the decade since that report, U.S. homelessness has skyrocketed, in large part by people requiring psychiatric care.
Last year Jordan Neely, a mentally disturbed man, threatened passengers on a New York subway car, until Marine Corp veteran Daniel Penny stepped in and placed Neely in a chokehold. Neely died, and Penny was tried and eventually acquitted.
In another New York subway incident, Guatemalan national Sebastian Zapeta-Calil, who had entered the U.S. illegally, set New Jersey resident Debrina Kawam on fire while she slept on a subway car. Zapeta-Calil then calmly sat down and watched her die in agony.
Had there been adequate in-patient facilities, Neely and Kawam might be alive today, Penny might not have had to defend himself in a costly criminal trial, and Zapeta-Calil might not be sitting in a jail cell awaiting his own day in court.
That’s just one public transit system in one city. But homelessness has exploded all across the United States.
As of February of last year, nearly 327,000 homeless people roamed the streets of America, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.
Add to that staggering number the lack of in-patient facilities and the "soft-on-crime" policy of judges and prosecutors in Democratic-run jurisdictions, and it soon becomes obvious that we’re courting disaster.
As long-term psychiatric care fell out of favor, the prison system became a caregiver to the mentally ill. A 2016 survey of prison inmates found that 43% of state prisoners and 23% of federal prisoners had a history of mental illness, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Consider the case of Armond Langford, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison last year for a series of violent crimes. But then an activist Louisville, Kentucky judge freed him after he had served less than one year of his sentence.
Langford then invaded a home, stole a woman’s car, kidnapped her and her children, and used his hostages to rob a local bank. He stabbed the woman twice with a large knife in the process.
In some instances the criminally insane aren’t even tried.
One recent example is Solomon Galligan, a registered sex offender who now goes by the name of Carmen Galligan. He was charged with the attempted kidnapping of a child from an elementary school playground.
The judge dismissed the case last week after determining that Galligan was mentally incompetent to stand trial.
"This is a case where the victims expressed great fear at what happened to their children, and then outrage and concern about the state of the law, which required dismissal in this case," said Assistant District Attorney Ryan Brackley, who prosecuted the case.
What’s worse, this is at least the fourth time since 2018 that Galligan has been charged with similar crimes, only to have the charges dismissed due to his mental incompetence to stand trial.
Galligan will once again be placed in short-term civil commitment, and when he’s released a few months later, there’s no requirement for authorities to notify the general public, or even his victims. He’ll simply return to his life of crime.
Long-term, in-patient mental healthcare facilities began falling out of favor when they began engaging in questionable treatments, including electro-shock therapy, insulin-shock therapy, and even lobotomies, a sad state of affairs that was depicted in the screenplay "One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest."
But Americans have always been, if nothing else, an innovative lot, and are certainly capable of providing compassionate, long-term, in-patient psychiatric care.
Not only does the mental health of the country depend on it, but so does the safety and security of the general public.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He's also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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