This is such a great question! It is also very complicated. The mental health system has a long history of confusion, political control, and influence from so called "seasoned" professionals such as Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin. The influence of "seasoned professionals" and their political and cultural ideologies are partially to blame.

But the impact of de-institutionalization is great and we see that today with violence, victimization, homelessness, and incarceration of the mentally ill across the nation. About 7.7 million American adults suffer from severe mental illness, while about 20% of children and adolescents suffer from severe mental illness as well. Severe mental illness is the culprit behind incidents involving a good number of incarcerations, deaths, victimizations, homelessness, and even homicides. We can blame de-institutionalization for most of this trouble.

De-institutionalization occured during the early 1950s-1970s and was encouraged by a multiplicity of supporters of short-term care. The decision to reduce hospitals around the nation and increase community care was done in good conscience. The problem is that the release of millions of severely ill citizens (or de-institutionalization) was not strategically thought out by many hospitals and state and federal law decision makers. As a result, these severely ill individuals were relased into the public but with very little direction, aftercare, social work services, case management, housing, and other services needed to help these individuals live independent lives. The majority of these individuals ended up homeless, victimized (by criminals and sometimes law enforcement), jailed, placed in residential treatment facilities or group homes, and even dead (by suicide or homicide). As a result of poor after-planning, our society took a great hit.

Today, we have a society of individuals who are not being treated in a timely and appropriate fashion because of laws supporting short-term care, community care, and de-institutionalization. One such law that supports short-term care is the "dangerousness criteria." This criteria, active in many states, was put into place to make involuntary commitment a last resort option for treating the mentally ill. An indivdiual must have a detailed suicide or homicide plan and admit to their plan before being hospitalized. In many cases, if a hospital or agency does not believe an individual is harmful to self or others, the hospital or agency will not hospitalize and treat the individual. In many cases, patients have learned to "play" the system and often refrain from admitting their homicial or suicidal (and in some cases both) thoughts. As a result, these individuals are let go, untreated and nothing ever happens to help them. In severe cases, the individual never gets treatment and ends up dead or desiring to cause harm to others.

For more information on this issue, check out my article here on Answers (http://mentalhealth.answers.com/mentally-challenged/5-ways-the-mental-health-system-has-failed-families#slide1) or read about John Shick in Pennsylvania (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tag/john-shick).

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