The Roots of America’s Mentally Ill Homelessness Crisis

The deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill has intensified the homelessness crisis across American cities . . .

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Comments (11)

Yes, Sean Kennedy, we’re the ones who are crazy.

Craziness is doing the same thing, over and over and expecting a different result.
Example of which is trying to cure homelessness with mental illness pills.

The so- called homelessness is a big social problem that “we” have made bigger by transubstantiating homelessness into mental illness and treating it as such. The silver bullet bit.
The result is worse than negative: the more pills, the more mental illness treatment, the more homelessness.

Yes, Sean Kennedy, we’re the ones who are crazy.
We keep on doing the same despite the bad results. Why? Because we deny the fact that
we invented homelessness as an illness, a medical illness of the mental type. And treat it with another invention: mental Illness treatment. Both, illness, and treatment, are just metaphors for Medicine. There is no medical treatment for metaphors.

What to do? First, stop the denial and look at the facts courageously. Easy to say, very difficult to do. Why? Because the homelessness illness, together with the rest of the mental illnesses, is a trillion plus-dollar industry that supports employees, investors, illusion and State power. Second, accept there is no silver bullet for some human aberrations. That may be even more difficult because it requires a good amount of humility.

Mental illness is not a medical illness. Mental illness is a moral enterprise disguised as medical illness. It deals with moral values such as right and wrong, good, and bad. Examples of which are the civil commitment and the insanity defense on persons where the industry claims that persons have lost their moral values. Ironically, the industry also claims that persons can lose moral values due to medical illness. Never mind that there is no medical test that can tell whether a person has or has not moral values, just as there is no medical test that can tell whether someone is a Republican or a Democrat.

May 23, 2022 Nelson Borelli Reply

Based on Los Angeles’s overall population in 2020, which is given at 3,973,000, and its homeless population for the same year, listed as 66, 433, the city’s homeless population is .016% of the whole. Even though large in number it represents a small fraction of the total population. Nevertheless they are responsible for a disproportionate amount of violent crime: .016% of the population are responsible for 15% of the city’s violent crime. Put another way, the L.A.’s homeless population is more than ten times as likely to commit violent crime than the population at large.

May 23, 2022 Andrew Reply

The article seems to leave out the gigantic fact that the institutions that were closed were supposed to be replaced by community-based treatment centers but politicians, especially Republicans in the 1980s, refused to fund them leaving the mentally ill out in the cold literally and figuratively.

May 23, 2022 oliverlu70 Reply

That is just a liberal excuse that usually gets. blamed on funding. The truth is unless these ill or addicted persons do not have any potential punishment hanging over them, they will not comply with treatment or even bother to attend these supposed centers. Don’t blame a political group you just happen to dislike.

May 24, 2022 [email protected] Reply
- He’s telling the truth. They were supposedly going to devolve the institutions unto lower levels of govt and the funding never materialized. So they just ended up lying around the streets.
  
  June 1, 2022 cj Reply

The mental illness denialism conspiracy theory has lot to do with this mess. I’m a paleocon type that likes Chron and I’ve suffered from severe OCD my whole adult life. As hard as I’ve fought- drugs, therapy and all- it’s wrecked everything. It isn’t ‘liberal’, a ‘made up illness’ or a ‘life problem.’ It’s a medical issue involving brain chemistry and the panic circuit in the brain.

June 1, 2022 cj Reply

Mass immigration hasn’t helped either. Most of the homeless who camp out at my church aren’t crazy, but are dull-witted habitual goof-ups. Mexicans have taken over the scut work and the flophouses.

June 3, 2022 Steve Reply

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