Gene Couture’s history of mental hospital closures includes inaccuracies (“Alter treatment of mental illness,” Our Readers’ Views, Dec. 31). The intention was never to close mental hospitals and let jails handle their patients as the letter indicates.
The expectation after hospital closures was that mentally ill individuals would receive care in community-based facilities. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed MHFA, the Mental Health Fitness Act, which provided funding for community-based mental health care. In 1981, under President Ronald Reagan, MHFA was repealed. Lack of funding doomed community care. That’s when mental illness became a burden on the criminal justice system and a bigger curse to those unlucky enough to have an illness in their brain wiring.
The second issue is the broken system of involuntary commitments, a subject too complicated for this letter. For the homeless we see waving their arms, screaming, living in an imaginary world not of their making, even if they were sent to treatment, where would that be? Relative to need, hospitals and supported housing are virtually nonexistent. Again no funding equals no care.
Some voters believe, for the mentally ill, having freedom to refuse treatment is more important than them being safe. Living on the streets, no care, free to self-medicate, they become victims and victimizers. The shame is on us all.
Editor’s note: The writer’s name was left off this Letter to the Editor. The Columbian regrets the error.
