Greenwald builds a straw man on de-institutionalization

I agree with a lot of what Glenn Greenwald writes. In fact, I'll often agree 100 percent iwth individual columns.

But, in writing a column about many American thought leaders wanting new legal powers in the wake of Jared Loughner's shooting of Gabrielle Giffords, Greenwald builds a straw man about 1960s de-institutionalization of the mentally ill, either out of ignorance of all the facts of that era, or deliberately setting them aside. It's more likely the former, but Greenwald is both smart enough and sharp enough it could be the latter.

I'm not denying that "Cuckoo's Nest" type institutions existed in the 1960s. I'm not denying that perfectly sane people were forcibly institutionalized, perhaps, even, for homosexuality.

But Glenn, in attacking William Galston for presenting 1960s-era psychiatric institutionalization as a golden age, ignores things himself in presenting de-institutionalization as at least close to a golden age.

The biggest fact he ignores is that deinstitutionalization, as it was driven first in California, itself had definite political overtones that went well beyond civil libertarianism.

As Fuller Torrey and others have documented, the California push largely came out of Orange County and was co-causally tracked by the push to get Ronald Reagan elected governor. (By the way, I hugely recommend Torrey's "The Insanity Offense." He tackles the politics behind the issue, too.)

Bircher types had paranoia about psychiatry; that was their angle. Budget hawks thought California was spending too much on state psychiatric services.

There's more here and here on the politics involved, as well as misperceptions involved. Google California + "Lanterman-Petris-Short Act" for more.

On the former, picture if we over-institutionalized the severely mentally ill today, and then, along came Scientology to lead a push to overthrow institutionalization, not just partly, but totally. Wouldn't we, in this case, ignore the cliche and look the gift horse in the mouth quite carefully, indeed?

Also missing from Greenwald's account is the degree of deinstitutionalization. An excellent Frontline episode from PBS pegs it at 98 percent. The show transcript also notes how many of these people wound up being incarcerated long-term for misdemeanor offenses simply because that was the least bad option available. (I've reported on the problem of mental illness within the Texas prison system.)

So, Glenn, your story's a bit incomplete. Rather than an apparent blanket defense of deinstitutionalization, a J'accuse of lack of spending for adequate institutionalization options would have been much better. Many other things were missing from Greenwald's blast, like (as Jared Loughner illustrates) mental illness and chemical dependency and more.