Mental Health Failings

For John, BLUF:  We took a wrong turn on mental health a while back, and we still have no path back.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

---

How The Loss Of U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals Led To A Mental Health Crisis

From NPR, By Ms Samantha Raphelson, 30 November 2017.

Yes, this is almost two years old, but the facts persist.

Here is the lede plus three:

A severe shortage of inpatient care for people with mental illness is amounting to a public health crisis, as the number of individuals struggling with a range of psychiatric problems continues to rise.

The revelation that the gunman in the Sutherland Springs, Texas, church shooting escaped from a psychiatric hospital in 2012 is renewing concerns about the state of mental health care in this country.  A study published in the journal Psychiatric Services estimates 3.4 percent of Americans — more than 8 million people — suffer from serious psychological problems.

The disappearance of long-term-care facilities and psychiatric beds has escalated over the past decade, sparked by a trend toward deinstitutionalization of psychiatric patients in the 1950s and '60s, says Dominic Sisti, director of the Scattergood Program for Applied Ethics of Behavioral Health Care at the University of Pennsylvania.

"State hospitals began to realize that individuals who were there probably could do well in the community," he tells Here & Now's Jeremy Hobson.  "It was well-intended, but what I believe happened over the past 50 years is that there's been such an evaporation of psychiatric therapeutic spaces that now we lack a sufficient number of psychiatric beds."

Later in the story:

While President Trump and others have claimed a connection exists between mental illness and the rise in gun violence, most mental health professionals vehemently disagree.

"There is no real connection between an individual with a mental health diagnosis and mass shootings.  That connection according to all experts doesn't exist," says Bethany Lilly of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law.

There are two key points here.  First is the belief we could deinstitutionalize large numbers of the mentally ill and improve their lives.  Turns out it was not the case.

In the story, and today, we are told there is no connection between mass murder and mental illness.  Does that mean that mass murder is normal?  Or, maybe, there is some other way of classifying mass murders?

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff