For years, the mentally ill were institutionalized. They weren’t in encampments, they weren’t on street corners begging, so as a society we didn’t have to confront the wreckage that untreated serious mental illness inflicts on both the individual and the community. But things changed, and for a short time in the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a plan, a real plan, for providing services to people with debilitating mental illness.
The federal Community Mental Health Act of 1963 provided funds to establish a national network of community mental health centers. I worked in several of those centers before the funding ran out, the centers disbanded, and mental health care disintegrated into the shameful chaos it is now.
It was the best of times. Inpatient care was integrated with partial hospital care. Insurance companies did not run the show. Practitioners were supported and paid well. Emergencies were handled. Families were supported. Then we got a government that decided we were spending too much money on these good-for-nothing loafers who couldn’t hold jobs and did drugs and drank too much and passed out on the sidewalk. The money for these centers ran out, and the vision died. Let the private sector handle it! Money will trickle down, and all will be well.
Next time you pass someone begging on the street corner, understand that we have failed this person. Maine has no effective mental health system, and care providers are overwhelmed. That person on the corner is a symptom of our neglect.
Kathleen Sullivan
Freeport
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