We Need a Better Way of Dealing with the Mentally Ill

The Other McCain reminds us that Crazy People Are Dangerous

Mostly in reaction to the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, we decided that mental hospitals/asylums were a bad thing. They were closed.

The de-institutionalization of the mentally ill has been a disaster for American society. Many cities are plagued by homeless encampments largely populated by people who would probably be better off locked up in a psych ward, but the state mental asylums got shut down decades ago, and the healthcare system doesn’t have enough facilities to deal with all the kooks and addicts out on the streets.

Click thru for the details of a man in a "mental health crisis" who was trying to break into homes, and he eventually attacked police with a hatchet; he was shot.

We closed the asylums because in response to a fictional account, society decided that they were inhumane. Instead, all too many people in "mental health crisis" are killed, either by police or by armed citizens. The fact that they are a threat due to mental health doesn't mean that they are not a threat.

A hatchet-wielding lunatic is prowling around your neighborhood? Call the cops. What happens if the lunatic charges at the cops? BANG! BANG! BANG! Problem solved. Maybe this wasn’t what the ACLU had in mind when they pushed for de-institutionalization back in the 1970s, but as a treatment for someone “experiencing a mental health crisis,” police gunfire has the advantage of being permanent.