USA: The Great Society requires Healthy Minds

Among other Great Society initiatives, LBJ signed into law Medicare, Medicaid, and the Mental Health Amendments of 1967. The purpose of that last was to move the mentally ill from remote, jail-like asylums to community-based treatment centers in order to provide better care and to recognize the dignity of people so afflicted.

We regularly hear about the funding of Medicare and Medicaid, yet nothing about funding for community-based mental healthcare. Congress failed.

We do not know whether that billion dollars from the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act for mental health will result in effective identification and therapy that would prevent a person from carrying out a Highland Park-style attack or reduce suicides. I pray that it may.