AlternetI remember when the policies of Ronald Reagan began impacting Minnesota. I had just sobered up during the final stages of shuttering the Minnesota State Hospital system. The people I knew who worked in government jobs, mainly social workers, and the counselors in the addiction field, complained loudly that the services for the people they helped were suddenly, and unceremoniously, cut.
The gutting of public mental health services began with Reagan, first in California where he closed state-funded mental health facilities. As president he cut aid for federally-funded community-run mental health programs. The result: thousands of more homeless people in California and nationwide and a spike in the prison population. The New York Times recently reported that despite a rapid rise in the suicide rate in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the city has half of its psychiatrists, social workers and mental health care workers.
Throughout my career as a chemical dependency counselor I have watched helplessly as people were thrown in jail and prison for behaviors associated with their mental illness and addiction. These people were not criminals. If they were treated for their mental illness, or their addictions, they would not commit the crimes that put them in jail. And usually, the amount of services, and time spent in the facilities now closed down, were shorter, and of less cost then the time, and costs, of jail.
Today, instead of the reduced costs of treatment and housing in the State Hospital systems, they are housed, and not treated, in a far more expensive prison system. So, after being "rehabilitated" in prison, they are released into a society they are not capable of navigating, resort to their old behaviors, and are returned to jail or prison. As a result, they are a more costly economic strain on society.
The Morning in America, described as bright and prosperous by Reagan in 1984 has become a dismal afternoon for the poor and powerless.
