American Enterprise Institute on Mental Health Policy and poverty

How our mental health policy fails the poor

Mental illness dominates discussions about mass shootings. Far more prevalent is its connection with poverty. One-third of the nation’s homeless are the untreated mentally ill. One in five people in jail or prison has a severe mental illness.

In an important new paper, AEI’s Sally Satel argues that our nation’s failure in mental health policy is a classic case of good intentions gone bad. Policy responded to maltreatment in state psychiatric facilities by effectively eliminating them. In 1955, our nation had 560,000 psychiatric beds. Today we have 35,000.

Read full report here.