On 12/17/12 4:48 PM, wrote:
On Monday, December 17, 2012 4:02:46 PM UTC-5, iBoaterer wrote:
In article ,

says...



On Monday, December 17, 2012 11:34:25 AM UTC-5, jps wrote:

MSNBC host Joe Scarborough,



Was wrong whe he said: "The violence we see spreading...



It is not spreading, it is actually reduced from 1980-90 levels.



Here's what needs to be looked at instead of new, knee-jerk gun control laws.



http://now.msn.com/i-am-adam-lanzas-mother-says-mom-of-mentally-ill-son?



Thanks to Reagan for cutting mental health programs....

Stop being a liberal parrot.

"The law that Reagan signed was the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS), passed by the legislature & signed into law in 1967 by Governor Ronald Reagan. The idea was to "stem entry into the state hospital by encouraging the community system to accept more patients, hopefully improving quality of care while allowing state expense to be alleviated by the newly available federal funds." It also was designed to protect the rights of mental patients. It was considered a landmark of its time--a change in the attitude toward mental illness and its treatment.

The law restricted involuntary commitment, among other things. It allows people to refuse treatment for mental illness, unless they are clearly a danger to someone else or themselves. It facilitated release of many patients---supposedly to go to community mental health treatment programs.

Reagan's role, besides signing the bill, was using it as a reason to cut his budget. What Reagan did was, at the same time the bill was passed, to reduce the budget for state mental hospitals. His budget bill "abolished 1700 hospital staff positions and closed several of the state-operated aftercare facilities. Reagan promised to eliminate even more hospitals if the patient population continued to decline. Year-end population counts for the state hospitals had been declining by approximately 2000 people per year since 1960."

This law presumed that the people released from hospitals or not committed at all would be funneled in community treatment as provided by the Short Doyle Act of 1957. It was "was designed to organize and finance community mental health services for persons with mental illness through locally administered and locally controlled community health programs."

It also presumed that the mentally ill would voluntarily accept treatment if it were made available to them on a community basis. However, because of the restrictions on involuntary commitment, seriously mentally ill people who would not consent to treatment "who clearly needed treatment but did not fit the new criteria or who recycled through short term stays -- became a community dilemma. For them, there was nowhere to go." Once released, they would fail to take meds or get counseling and went right back to being seriously ill.

Also, unfortunately, at the time LPS was implemented, funding for community systems either declined or was not beefed up. Many counties did not have adequate community mental health services in place and were unable to fund them. Federal funds for community mental health programs, which LPS assumed would pick up the slack, began drying up in the early 1980s, due to budget cutbacks in general. The Feds shifted funding responsibility to the states.

Sources:

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~cmhsr/history.html
Reform of the Lanterman, Petris, Short Act
"

It's not as simple as your mind thinks. (pun intended)




Reagan "presumed (utter bull****) the local communities would have the
wherewithal the feds were no longer going to provide. Nothing has
changed except that in most communities there are even less
possibilities for treatment of the indigent than when Reagan decimated
the federal contributions for the larger facilities.

Your spin on it is just more right-wing bull****. But, hey, that's all
you have. In a few more years as you aging right-wing southern white
republican bigots start dying out in greater numbers, this country might
regain its ability to move forward.