President Trump to sign executive order forcing homeless off America's streets

Surely, a controversial measure! What will follow next? What treatments will be available etc.?

However, the once so called progressive idea to close all mental institutions and release all mentally ill patients (aka deinstitutionalization) was was a mistake. 

"President Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling on states and cities to end “endemic vagrancy” — and rehouse homeless people, including drug addicts and those suffering from mental problems, in “treatment centers.”

The order redirects federal funding to prioritize “shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment.”

On average, more than 274,000 people were sleeping on the streets each night last year under [46th] President ... the order says. ..."

"... Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order.  Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens.  My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety. ..."

Trump to sign executive order forcing homeless off America's streets

Ending Crime And Disorder On America’S Streets (Executive Order)

We are still living with the negative aftermath of radical psychiatric deinstitutionalization of the 1970s-1980s

Food for thought!

Were asylums for severely, mentally ill individuals really so bad? Perhaps, these institutions needed to be updated etc., but not permanently closed. 

Unfortunately, the article is too much about entrenched interests of welfare workers and labor unions etc. What about the lobby of homeless individuals with mental disorders?

Ms. Perera also claims that "fiscal measures" and "budgetary pressures" contributed to the deinstitutionalisation of the 1970s/1980s. I am not sure about the relevance.

"... Psychiatric deinstitutionalization certainly had a humanitarian justification. By the 1970s and 1980s, a combination of poor hospital conditions and post-1960s social reform ideas had convinced many observers that people with mental illnesses were better off living “in the community” than inside the walls of “the asylum.” Novels and movies like “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” helped to spread that message. ...

Those governments were also reluctant to fund the community-based services (outpatient medical care, supportive housing, employment workshops) required to successfully transition patients out of hospitals. The United States was particularly unsuccessful at this task. The lack of appropriate community-based services has left many Americans with severe and chronic mental illnesses living on the streets, or in prisons. ..."

The key to some nations’ public support for mental health care | Cornell Chronicle

Homelessness and deinstitutionalization

What is the connection? And how strong is it? How many of the homeless population are affected by substance abuse or by severe mental health issues? 

Sure anyone has the freedom to choose their lifestyle, but in the case of homeless people what were their choices actually? I might be wrong, but there seems to be a dearth of studies on homeless people. Compare that to e.g. the celebrity LGBTQ community!

Like defund the police or soft on crime, the radical deinstitutionalization that took place in Western countries in the last several decades has most likely contributed to higher numbers of homeless people than otherwise. It has gone too far! The pendulum needs to swing back towards common sense and a more to the middle ground!

Nobody seriously wants to go back to institutionalization as it was practiced in the 19th or 20th century, but some reinstitutionalisation on a case by case basis and with the intent to improve the person's mental and physical health and well being might be advisable!

"... Psychiatric deinstitutionalization was also influenced by the so-called antipsychiatry movement. From 1950 to 1970 the movement emphasized the role that social factors played in psychological disorders. It focused on social pathologies and on the deindividualization of mental illness (abandonment of individual values in an effort to identify with one’s society). At the same time, this movement held that connection to the community offered the best path toward amelioration and affirmed that institutional confinement was fundamentally harmful. ..."

Encyclopedia Brittanica: Deinstutionalization

Wikipedia: Deinstutionalisation

Americans have failed people with mental illness. Trump’s new budget will change that.

The massive closure of mental institutions (a.k.a. deinstitutionalisation) in the 1960s has been an enormous failure thanks to a flawed ideology!

In the U.S. as well as in other Western countries, way too many serious mentally ill people end up in jail or homeless instead of being treated and so on.

Bravo Trump!

"In 2018, 47 million people experienced some form of mental illness. More than 11 million of these Americans lived with mental illness of such severity that it impaired their ability to carry out normal life functions. And nearly 4 million Americans received no treatment at all. This is unacceptable. ... In the 1950s, there were more than 550,000 state psychiatric hospital beds in the United States. By 2016, this number had dropped to 37,679. Instead of receiving care, the sick are locked behind bars, often after encounters with police officers ill equipped to manage these encounters effectively. There are more than 392,000 incarcerated individuals with serious mental illness. That means there are 10 times more individuals with serious mental illnesses in prison beds than in state psychiatric hospital beds. ... There are at least 111,122 individuals with serious mental illness who are homeless, including 52,180 who have no form of shelter. ... And the administration has already taken action. Last year’s funding bill provided $3.9 billion for mental health programs, a $328 million increase."

Americans have failed people with mental illness. Trump’s new budget will change that. - The Washington Post: We must end the disgraceful way people with serious mental illness are treated.