get into this mess? Massive and rapid deinstitutionalization of people with mental health issues began in the late 1950s for several reasons: partly because effective antipsychotics had been discovered partly as a humanitarian response to the horrors of the overcrowded “snake pit” state psychiatric hospitals partly as a cost-cutting method (since mental health was often the biggest and most tempting item in state budgets). The rate of dying from Covid-19 was three time higher among people with schizophrenia than in the general community - the second biggest risk factor after age. In modern America, 350,000 people with mental illness are in jails or prisons (often for nuisance crimes that could easily have been avoided had treatment been available) 250,000 of them are homeless and the average life span of those with severe mental illness is 20 years less than that of the general population. In the Middle Ages, people with severe mental illness were often chained in prisons, begged on the street, or languished in poor houses. People with mental illness, their families, and society at large are suffering the tragic consequences of four decades of mental health defunding and privatization: 90% of psychiatric beds have been closed the once-wonderful system of publicly funded community mental health centers has been gutted crisis response teams are almost nonexistent and the available pool of affordable housing meets only a fraction of what’s needed. President Biden’s ambitious infrastructure plan has a glaring omission: It makes no effort to redress the awful reality that the United States has the worst mental health infrastructure of any country in the developed world. Exclusive analysis of biotech, pharma, and the life sciences Learn More
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December 2022
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