KevinMD November 8, 2023
According to a report from the U.S. Department of Justice, 37 percent of the people in prison have a history of mental health problems. This was not always the case. The United States at one time had state mental health facilities, where those with mental illness could be treated. From 1870 to 1955, these numbers increased until it peaked at almost 600,000. This was 0.36 percent of the then population of 465,900,000. By that time, 50 percent of all hospital beds were psychiatric.
But these hospitals were chronically underfunded, and when politicians came under criticism for the decrepit state of these institutions, they started looking for an excuse to shut them down. As luck would have it, science came through...
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