Deinstitutionalization utterly failed in the US. Not because it is a bad idea but because it was basically executed as Reagan shutting down inpatient treatment and refusing to divert those funds to community-based programs. Getting people out of those terrible institutions was a great idea. Letting them go without any support? Not such a great idea
Read the books Psychiatric Slavery and Faith in Freedom by libertarian psychiatrist Thomas Szasz.
Limitless Peace
Admittedly, I haven’t read his work but from what I’ve read of it, it seems entirely out of line with modern understanding of mental illness. He had his heart in the right place and there’s still an argument to be made about “when is this symptom a clinical presentation vs just a ‘typical’ behavior,” but we just know so much more about brain chemistry now. Mental illness is real.
His stuff is about as relevant to modern treatment as Freud. Cool to talk about but it doesn’t help anyone in treatment.
Edit: went to look him up again and found this, which I thought was interesting: https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/thomas-szasz-myth-migraine
He was a libertarian, so that’s not surprising. He wasn’t sane himself.
He claimed most people who were mentally ill were faking it.
I thought it was more like “mental illness is all normal thinking, so we need to stop treating it,” which just seems like an overreaction to overdiagnosis
No, he really thought they were faking it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Szasz#"Patient"_as_malingerer
Interesting, what a weird dude
I would be OK with it provided there is a system of checks and balances to prevent people from being institutionalized because they are “inconvenient”, not ill. Maybe an annual review of patients by a neutral 3rd party for example.
Before THAT can happen, we need universal health care to ensure everyone gets the physical and mental health care they need.
In Oz they do thankfully. But there’s checks by independent medical review panels for people under medical authority.
