[hedora]

Regan passed a bunch of bills as Governor that basically disbanded mental health care for the homeless.

Since it’s illegal to stick them in a drug rehab clinic, mandatory counseling sessions, or even force them back on their meds (with their prior written consent), all that’s left is putting them out of the public eye while they get high, I guess.

Or, maybe we could just switch the law back to what it was in 70’s.

[dragonwriter]

> Regan

Reagan

> passed a bunch of bills as Governor

Governors don't unilaterally “pass bills”. They sign (or veto) bills passed by the legislator.

> that basically disbanded mental health care for the homeless.

Deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan, national phenomenon driven in large parts by abuse scandals in institutions.

[perl4ever]

>Reagan

This matters because Donald Regan was a guy who worked for Ronald Reagan.

>Deinstitutionalization was a bipartisan, national phenomenon driven in large parts by abuse scandals in institutions.

Not just scandals in the sense of individual acts, but changes in thinking about patient rights. For example, eugenic sterilization started as policy more than rogue abuse, and was still going on as late as the 1970s. I think the laws about institutionalizing people against their will were changed.

No doubt saving money was a factor, but lots of factors coincided, largely because people wanted to reform the system as society had changed.

[dragonwriter]

> Not just scandals in the sense of individual acts, but changes in thinking about patient rights.

The two are linked, there was an absolute wave of scandals in the sense of abusive (often systematic rather than individual) acts in particular institutions that were instrumental in getting people to rethink patient rights; without them, the institutionalized would probably have remained out of sight and out of mind.

[restes]

> legislator

legislature

[Mountain_Skies]

Were these law irrevocable? If not, every governor and state legislature since then are also complicit.

[devilbunny]

The laws were not. The judicial decisions that made it far more difficult to hold people against their will - which ultimately drove a lot of deinstitutionalization; the asylums were closed mostly as a response, not a cause - are effectively irrevocable.