[lbo-talk] Thomas Szasz, R.I.P.

[Wojtek S]

Jim: "While he always felt that it was wrong to institutionalize
people against their will, to deinstutionalize patients who had been
hospitalized for years, if not decades, was not necessarily doing them
any favors."

[WS:] It is not just people who have been institutionalized, but also
those who need institutionalization.  What you see now is a bunch of
people who need services but cannot get any unless they break the law
and go to jail.  In effect, mental health care has been replaced by
prisons in this country.  Some freedom indeed.

Institutionalization does not have to be imprisonment, of course, but
there are many people who cannot function on their own and need
support that only institutional setting can provide.  My wife,who
works in special education, deals with these cases daily.  The lack of
services for those who cannot afford to pay for them is among chief
complains of people working with this population.

-- 
Wojtek

"An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."