On a nice Friday night my friends and I were walking around enjoying the view of the beautiful city. Everything seemed so peaceful and beautiful; people were walking around hand in hand looking up at the moon enjoying the beautiful lights of the city. Chicago is really beautiful at night, I always loved going downtown every since I could remember; however, one thing that bothered me how much homeless I would see, and I always wondered why so many homeless around, why cant they just get a job, I would say to myself those people are just plain lazy! I have no respect for them! Not until that Friday night while we were walking a a homeless man came running to us and shouting “HE IS AFTER ME! HE IS AFTER ME” for a moment I looked around to see what this man was talking about, looked around to see who is after him, but I found nothing….. Soon I realized this man is just crazy. I thought to myself now homeless people are crazy too, not only lazy. Never thought about that night until I took abnormal psychology last semester, when my teacher bought my attention to closing down a lot of mental institutions around the county. A lot of people would say YES that’s a great thing, because mental institutions are horrible places, they’re scary and treat people horrible. Did anyone ever think why do we think that? I did, and the answer was because in every single movie I could remember they brought mental institutions to be a horrible terrifying place. Now don’t get me wrong I don’t have the image of mental institutions only form movies but from actual documentaries and couple of articles I’ve read, but they were all at least twenty years old, before they use to treat mental ill people horrible in those palaces, worst than prison.
A lot of people complained about the mental institutions and media give it such a bad name that I found it kind of weird how horrible and terrifying everyone made it seem so I decided to do my own research. In the 1980s, and maybe a little earlier president Ronald Reagan started closing down mental institutions due to the economy. In the aftermath of World War II, the United States experienced a period of dramatic economic growth. During the early 1960s a series of initiatives designed to reform the mental health system were passed. At issue was the system of state run hospitals for the mentally ill, which were increasingly perceived as inhumane and, with the help of new medicat ions, rather unnecessary for large portions of the patient population. In 1961, the Joint Commission on Mental Illness released Action for Mental Health, calling for the integration of the mentally ill into the general public with the aid of Community Mental Health Centers. In 1963, the Mental Retardation Facilities and Community Mental Health Centers instituted the centers, but due to the financial drain of the Vietnam War during the 1960s and the financial crisis of the 1970s, the program was not fully funded. The result was the release of patients into an environment lacking the Community Mental Health Centers to adequately treat them (Becker and Schulberg, 1976; DeLeonardis and Mauri, 1992; Hollingsworth, 1994; Rachlin, 1974; Rachlin et al, 1975; Saathoff et al, 1992; Shwed, 1978, 1980; Talbott, 1992; Worley and Lowery, 1988;). By the start of the Carter administration in 1977, involuntary commitment had been restricted to those who were deemed as potentially dangerous to themselves or, perhaps more significantly, those around them. Most of the times, the commitment had to be sponsored by a family member and/or ordered by the court. A result of this policy was that the mentally ill patient who refused treatment typically did not receive any at all. If the patient had lost contact with family members, she or he would not be committed unless found to be a threat by the court. Often, those arrested ended up in jail rather than in treatment if they had not been found to be a threat but had committed a crime (Abramson, 1972; Conrad and Schneider, 1980). On e result was a high degree of stress and frustration experienced by the relatives of the patient. Throughout the 1970s, family members organized with the purpose of correcting a policy that they perceived was wrong. ( Alexandar Thomas, 1998)
So this whole act started really not to help out the metal people, and give them a better treatment this simply started out and still going on to cut down the budgets of the government. Anytime any state have economic problems the first thing the government dose is close down any mental institutions. Last year alone three mental institutions were closed down only in Illinois. State officials say they are legally bound to care for those who have been found unfit to stand trial or not guilty by reason of insanity, and with a $58 million funding gap in the hospitals’ budgets, they must cut back elsewhere. They also contend that many people would be better served outside of a hospital. Sixty years ago, in the whole country we had about 322 state psychiatric hospitals that cared for more than 500,000 patients at any given time. In the most recent study by the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors Research Institute, from 2009, the whole county is down 208 hospitals that cared for less than 50,000 patients. (Keilman, 2011) So if looking at this study alone more than 100 hospitals closed down, leaving out thousands of patients with intense indeed of care.
A lot of people would argue that this is a good thing, because a lot of patients are being treated better now, throughout a psychiatric clinic and also that person gets to live with his/her family living a “normal” life. However, when you really think about it most of the patients are not “normal” and living normal might be a very difficult task for them. A lot of people still argue that cutting down the mental institutions is a good thing for everyone, before making that statement I want you to think about something. From the 1980s since the 2000 before the war of terrisoim our economy went up, and even after all of the complains our economy is going up again in 2012 but did you ever notice and thought why is there is many homeless? And why our prisons are so packed. A recent study showed that there is a high number of prisoners are mentally ill people who basically have nowhere to stay so the government just decided to throw them in some kind of prison. Our prisons are overcrowded due to the “cutting down” the government came up around the 1980s.
After watching this documentary it really did make me open my eyes and have more emphyth for the homeless people, it made me realize how much homeless people who are in need of help emotionally more than physically and everyone is just kind of ignoring it by the giving the homeless person a coup of soup or a jacket to wear around the winter times. We all think if we just give some money, food, or cloth to any homeless person we tend to help them a lot and that’s how the problem ends for them. However, the biggest problem is a lot of these homeless people need a place to stay and to take care of them. Another problem I always notice is people who go to prison once most of the times go back to it again, and most of those people are mentally ill people. The problem is simple they are not getting proper treatment. The government hides behind caring too much about people for getting away with all of these closings to the mental hospitals. Even Dr. Joseph Bloom, a psychiatrist at the Oregon Health and Science University who has researched the trend, said much of that reduction has been positive, as new medications and therapies allowed people to be treated in less restrictive settings. But the recent downsizing, he said, is primarily about saving money, not improving care. “They’ve basically been cutting back to the only population they can’t do anything with, which are the people who come from the criminal courts,” he said (Keilman, 2011)
All of this cutting down just leaves a lot of people in need in places they don’t belong, or even some who really need help it leaves them nothing but committing suicide. I think we all ignore this topic because we look at the view the government wants us to only see which is mental hospitals are the scary place that treat people horrible, and those hospitals are just bad for any human being, because at the end all what mattered is how the person is treated right? How about all of the homeless, or all of the people that don’t have a family to take care of her/ him or sometimes some families don’t even want to get involved where does it leave that person? Yes, your answer is right it leaves them on the street with no help, where they end up homeless and soon find a home but not any home just prison where everything gets worse from that point on.
Work cited
Alford, C. F. (1988). Mastery and Retreat: Psychological Sources of the Appeal of Ronald Reagan. Political Psychology, 9, 571-89.
Becker, A. and Schulberg, H. C. (1976). Phasing Out State Hospitals: A Psychiatric Dilemma. New England Journal of Medicine, 294, 255-61.
Keilman, John.(October, 18 2011) Cuts would slash access to state mental hospitals. Chicago Tribune, pp 1-2.
Rachlin, S. (1974). With Liberty and Psychosis for All. Psychiatry Quarterly, 48, 410-20.
Thomas, Alexander. 1998. Electronic Journal of Sociology (1998) Ronald Reagan and the Commitment of the Mentally Ill: Capital, Interest Groups, and the Eclipse of Social Policy. 1-6
