(Nov. 12, 2013) New York’s late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s devotion to social justice was equaled by his disdain for political correctness.
With the recent publication of Dr. E. Fuller Torrey’s American Psychosis detailing the collapse of the American mental health system Sen. Moynihan’s indictment of the Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 bears revisiting.
Since the passage of the act, Moynihan told Congress 15 years ago, “we have emptied state mental hospitals, but we have not provided commensurate outpatient treatment. Increasingly, individuals with mental illnesses are left to fend for themselves on the streets, where they victimize others or, more frequently, are victimized themselves. Eventually, many wind up in prison, where the likelihood of treatment is nearly as remote.
“[T]he planners had bet on improving national mental health ’by improving the quality of general community life through expert knowledge, not merely by more effective treatment of the already ill.’
“The problem was: there is no such knowledge…. So as the federal government turned to other matters, the mental institutions continued to release patients, essentially to fend for themselves.… Soon, the homeless appeared. Only to be defined as victims of an insufficient supply of affordable housing. No argument, no amount of evidence has yet affected that fixed ideological view.”
Sen. Moynihan would be disappointed to know that in 2013, “that fixed ideological view” continues to hold sway, and far too many of the most vulnerable individuals with severe mental illness continue to fend for themselves – in the streets, behind bars, in emergency rooms.
Read what Dr. Torrey had to say about the 50th anniversary of the act of Congress that set the stage for this tragedy in “A Psychiatric Trick or Treat” on Oct. 31.
To comment, visit our Facebook page.
Visit our blog archive to read all our recent posts.