The three largest mental health providers in the nation are the following jails: Cook County in Illinois, Los Angeles County and Rikers Island in New York.
It didn’t have to be this way and it’s not as if past political leaders haven’t tried. This week, USA Today took a look at the Community Mental Health Act, the last piece of legislation signed by President John F. Kennedy. The act, which turns 50 on Oct. 31, “aimed to build mental health centers accessible to all Americans so that those with mental illnesses could be treated while working and living at home, rather than being kept in neglectful and often abusive state institutions, sometimes for years on end.”
The goal was to build 1,500 centers and cut the size of those living in state mental hospitals–at the time more than half a million– by half. Addressing Congress about the legislation, Kennedy called it a “bold new…
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