[ravel-bar-foo]

The US also doesn't have mandatory inpatient mental health care (or at least this has been severely downsized since the 1970s). How much of the numbers can be explained by other countries have higher rates mental health care institutionalization, while the US has shifted most of these people to prisons?

[ravel-bar-foo]

I found some numbers: according to Statistica, Europe has 275 mental health 'hospital admissions' per 100,000, whereas the Americas have 41.8. That could be entirely enough to explain the difference in prison populations, but of course one would need data on the length of the average mental health hospitalization. It also doesn't explain the comparison to other regions with lower incarceration and lower mental health treatment rates, which is pretty much the entire rest of the world.

Statistica: https://www.statista.com/statistics/452902/admission-rate-in...

[lazyasciiart]

The US also doesn’t have optional inpatient mental health care, for many people. There are simply no beds available, even for people who have been ordered there by a court.