In a previous post, I discussed my thoughts on Frontline's New Asylums documentary, about the overcriminalization of the mentally ill. Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on housing the mentally ill in prisons, when they could be treated more affordably (and more humanely) by the community. Because that video (filmed in 2005) left me with a lot of questions, I looked up some more recent resources. Of the videos I watched, my favorite was a series created by Brave New Films.
New Asylums (2005) is a Frontline documentary that delves into the problem of housing the mentally ill in prison systems. Believe it or not, the world's three largest asylums for mentally ill are the Cook County Jail in Chicago, the Twin Towers of the Los Angeles County Jail, and Riker's Island in New York. This problem has been escalating ever since the mid 1900's when deinstitutionalization of mentally ill and intellectually challenged became a popular movement to encourage "humane" treatment of mentally ill and to reduce state expenditures on medical care.
Chapter 2 of Butcher's Abnormal Psychology is a bit harder to summarize than Chapter 1. It covered the reactions of people towards the mentally ill throughout history. There were lots of names mentioned, and trends galore. But I will try to focus on the ones that I found most interesting.
