No, the reason was to save tax money by making mental healthcare a personal responsibility instead of a social one. There were many justifications (abuse, new drugs, etc), but the reason was cost.

Abuse was/is a reason to improve controls over abuse and increase funding to improve conditions. It is not a good reason to abandon inpatient care wholesale. Imagine if we had made the same decision about hospitals or schools, both of which engaged in routine abuse in the early 20th century.

> reason was cost

Yeah, it was supposed to be replaced with a kinder/gentler system, but that never came. They shut down the support system completely with a "we'll figure out how to fix this later" and that never came.

I think the solution is pretty obvious, TBH. Pay people to take care of their family with disabilities. It's often a full time job to take care of someone with a severe disability. Some states do make allowances to pay out to family caregivers, but it's a convoluted system where you have to be employed by a private care agency which is ultimately reimbursed for the care. There's a pointless private business in the way just adding on admin fees.

But there desperately needs to be something in place for people without that support. Parents die/leave/are incarcerated and we really don't have any sort of system setup to handle that.

>No, the reason was to save tax money

no, it wasn't, it was SCOTUS decision O'Connor v. Donaldson