If I had not underestimated the mortality rate during the 1970s

[Mr. Ed]

In the ’70s, deinstitutionalization swept the nation, sparking a massive shift in mental health care that still impacts us today. This movement aimed to transition patients from long-term institutional care to community-based care, believing that mentally ill individuals would have a better quality of life and more freedom outside restrictive institutions.

However, this transition was not controversial: some critics argued that community-based care was underfunded and ill-equipped to handle the needs of those discharged from psychiatric hospitals. Additionally, concerns arose about whether or not patients’ rights were genuinely being protected and if they were receiving adequate treatment in their new settings.

Despite these controversies, deinstitutionalization persisted as a driving force behind changes in mental health policy throughout the 1970s.

Advocates for community-based care emphasized the potential for increased personal autonomy and improved social integration for people with mental illnesses. The focus shifted towards providing outpatient services, group homes, day treatment programs, and other supportive resources in local communities rather than relying solely on large-scale institutions.

I recall recieving SSDI payments and Medicare insurance shortly after being diagnosed with Borderline Schizophrenia and being forced to work by my dad. I tried a number of unskilled labor employment but no matter how much I tried to work I did not last two weeks until symptoms forced me to quit. Not only could I not keep a job I lost my Social Security for being deemed employable.
By this time my symptoms took over every aspect of being, I couldn’t work and needed medical care and hospitalization my only choice was Georgia State Mental Hospital where I stayed until given permission by the doctor to go with parents and their friends by Winnebago camper to Los Vegas Nevada.

I learned a valuable lesson back then not trust parents because they don’t always know what’s good for you and one way or another the government knows everything and does not make the right decision for individuals or society.

 

[Paco Dennis]

During the late '80's there were several homeless people in Columbia who had been released from a mental hospital about 30 miles from it. They came here to beg, and try to find some kind of work. Then Columbia got more interested in looking good for popular magazines so it cleaned up the streets and made many new laws restricting homelessness in the city. I have wondered often what happened to those people? Where did they go? So many of them had become dependent on RX drugs, and without them they were a mess. The whole system broke down. A friend of mine got work in 2010 helping these kind of misplaced people regulate their lives in our society.
The mantra "it's all in your head" works for the haves, but not for the have-nots.

 

[Pepper]

I knew two of the original plaintiffs on the legal side of getting mental patients released. Twins, they were, a brother and sister, both gay. Both had been forced into institutions by their parents and labeled schizophrenic though they both felt it was a bearable condition and wanted their chance in the world. They were hard workers for the cause. It was so interesting to meet them. I did not know of the lawsuits to close the mental institutions down until I met them. They were running self-help workshops and one day I joined them and learned their story. This was in the mid-seventies.

Although I knew them in NYC I thought of them in 1980 when I was living in Madison WI. My husband and I were saving money to move to a nice apartment and lived on the cheap in a house where rooms were rented. Mental patients, very recently freed from their environment frequented this house. I too wondered where they would go when their initial funds ran out. Thankfully, it only took us about 2 months to raise the money to move into a great place on one of the lakes.