MY SAY: THE FOCUS ON MENTAL ILLNESS VS. GUN CONTROL
So many pundits now are nattering about mental illness. How many of them know what really happened when the law emptied mental institutions and cast the ill into the streets? The public had been programmed to think that all institutions were “the snake pit’ and “Willowbrook” and all treatments were lobotomies and torture such as”One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” In fact Dover, New York and Newtown, Connecticut had facilities which were secure with good housing and care and occupational and recreational facilities for the residents. I was very familiar with both before they were closed.
Read this book for the history of the abandonment of the mentally ill in America.
Madness in the Streets : How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Ill by Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia C. Armat (Aug 1, 2000)
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