The Economics of Untreated Mental Illness

Anyone who either has a family member who is severely mentally ill, or who has had their business or their town impacted by the destructive behavior of the severely mentally ill, knows first hand the detrimental impact untreated mental illness has on personal and community economic stability. How did we come to this point where we have no effective mental health treatment system in our country?
The origins of the dismantling of our mental health system began under President Kennedy. With all good intentions, Kennedy, who’s sister suffered from severe mental health issues, saw the need for better mental health treatment. Most mental health facilities were state-run mental hospitals, and many were horrifically deplorable and downright cruel to the mentally ill. President Kennedy wanted to reform the mental health system to provide better care for those suffering with various levels of incapacitating mental health issues. But what started out as a noble aspiration degenerated into our present insane, destructive mental health laws that are just as cruel if not more cruel than the worst aspects of our previous mental health system.
The American Civil Liberties Union had a large role to play in distorting Kennedy’s mental health reform efforts. Attorneys and legislators were determined to “set free” the mentally ill from mental health facilities. These supposed “experts” paid no heed to the warnings of experienced mental health professionals who knew the realities of severe mental illness. Non-medical attorneys and legislators became guilty of practicing medicine without a license when they declared that the severely mentally ill were capable of caring for themselves and functioning in society, and that it was the mental health facilities that were making people mentally ill. Attorneys and legislators promised that millions of dollars would be saved by the state and by taxpayers by closing down mental health hospitals. When cornered by medical staff as to how the mentally ill would be helped once they were “set free,” attorneys and legislators came up with the idea of “community health centers” that the mentally ill could, of their own volition, visit if they felt they had need of mental health support.
Despite the fact that there were some abysmally horrible mental health facilities, there were state-run and privately-run mental health facilities that provided good care for the mentally ill. We currently have some pretty bad nursing homes and hospitals. Would this fact ever justify our states shutting down all nursing homes and hospitals and throwing the terminally ill out onto the streets because some nursing homes and hospitals are poorly run? No, doing so would be insane. And cruel.
In my book, Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, I recount my conversation with a retired nurse who worked in one of Virginia’s state-run mental health hospitals. When Virginia’s legislators were determined to shut down all but a few state-run mental health hospitals, this retired nurse and other staff at her hospital contacted their legislators and told them how disastrous their proposals would be to patients’ safety and to the safety of the community. They were ignored. All that the myopic legislators had in view was how much money the state would save by slashing the number of mental health facilities in their state.
State by state, Democrat and Republican legislators and governors fell to the pressure of the ACLU and all but eliminated long-term and permanent commitment laws, and shut down mental health hospitals. Mental health professionals had to follow the new laws that, at best, made it extremely difficult for them to commit the severely mentally ill into the long-term or permanent care they needed. Medical schools also fell to the pressure of “liberal” ideologies and trained a new generation of medical professionals to deny the realities of severe and progressive psychotic and psychopathological mental conditions.
And what’s the result? Rampant crime, homelessness, escalating illicit drug addictions, and loss of life. The money saved by states by eliminating most mental health facilities? Not only has no money been saved, but more of our tax dollars have been spent building more and larger prisons to house the severely mentally ill after they’re arrested and re-arrested. Business districts have been destroyed by dangerous and homeless mentally ill people loitering, harassing passersby, defecating, and shooting up drugs in the streets. This results in lost tax revenue these businesses previously provided to their communities and to the states. Families’ personal savings have been depleted trying to find care for their severely mentally ill family members. Wage earners murdered by the severely mentally ill leave behind surviving family members struggling financially. In my own case, my severely mentally ill brothers have weaponized the court system by filing meritless, abusive lawsuits against me and others. These brothers file their lawsuits without an attorney (called pro se or self-represented) or, as one brother does at times, by using attorneys paid for by taxpayers because of his low-income status. At great damage to our finances, my husband and I have had to pay attorneys to get nine meritless, abusive lawsuits dismissed and obtain permanent pre-filing injunctions against the one brother who sued us the most. Our insane court system is another topic for another day.
The solution? As I propose in my book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, our state legislators must bring back long-term and permanent commitment laws and work with healthcare companies to create compassionate and competent mental health facilities. Many mentally ill people receive government financial assistance, which, as in the case of those in nursing homes, would be spent paying for their long-term or permanent care in mental health facilities. Until then, we will all continue to suffer from the insane, economically devastating policies that allow severely mentally ill people to destroy our communities. Can we afford not to stop this insanity?
Paulette J. Buchanan is a former educator and college professor. In 2020 she spoke on Cults and the Law at the International Cultic Studies Association/University of Tennessee’s Nashville conference. In 2019 she spoke on Legislative Action at ICSA’s Santa Fe conference.
Buchanan’s book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order describes her lifetime of abuse caused by her four older brothers, including their weaponization of the court system to file meritless lawsuits against her and many others. She finally obtained long overdue judgments and injunctions to put a stop to their lawsuits.
For more information and to purchase Paulette J. Buchanan’s book, Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, please visit her website www.fightingforjusticebook.com, or order her book on Amazon https://www.amazon.com/Paulette-Buchanan/e/B09N4ZBGY2%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share .