Another Voice for Sanity

Power Line's John Hinderaker writes about our national failure to care for the mentally ill. As longtime readers know, COTTonLINE has been harping on this issue for years. See what he wrote:

The United States does not have a mental health care system. Decades ago, we emptied our mental hospitals in a fit of “liberation” driven by silly movies like One Few Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and King of Hearts.

Today, involuntary commitment borders on the impossible. (This is why “universal background checks” are useless. Hardly anyone has been involuntarily committed or adjudged mentally incompetent, so hardly anyone other than convicted felons, who don’t try to buy guns legally, is on the government’s prohibited list.) Crazy people are remitted to the care of their families, who can’t possibly cope with them.

From there, they often wind up on the streets, where our real mental health professionals–police officers–are stuck with dealing with them. If they commit enough felonies, they will finally be sentenced to prison, where, if they are lucky, they will be diverted to a prison-associated mental hospital.

“Red flag” laws may be a good idea, but it would be better if dangerously crazy people could be hospitalized and cared for, not just deprived, temporarily, of firearms. Who knows? Maybe liberals have gotten over their romantic infatuation with mental illness, and might be willing to collaborate on a rational mental health care system.

Does anyone have the courage to propose forced hospitalization for the mentally ill and the addicted?