America’s failure to treat severe mental illnesses threatens the health and safety of people with the diseases and those around them.  The consequences are heartbreaking.  The numbers are staggering.  The human toll immense.  The financial cost is wasteful.  Each day, somewhere in the U.S., there is a preventable tragedy involving someone with an untreated severe mental illness.  Some are too sick to recognize their need for treatment.  Family members want to see a loved one get help but are often blocked by laws aimed at keeping someone trapped in a 1950s style of care at a time when 21st Century medical advances can mean the difference between life and death.  

The Treatment Advocacy Center exists to change these outdated policies and restore reason to treating mental illness.  Unfortunately, there are many roadblocks to change, not least of which is the lack of wanting to fix the system. 

In the 1950s, the U.S. started one of the largest medical migrations in human history. Known as deinstitutionalization from mental hospitals into the community, it has been a human failure, second only by the lack of effort to fix the mistakes.  In 1955, there were 559,000 Americans in state mental hospitals.  Today, fewer than 47,000 state hospital beds exist to serve a much larger population.  Promises of community services never came to pass.  Police and other public safety workers are often placed in the uncomfortable position of trying to fill gaps better left to doctors.  Now, our nation’s prisons house more people with mental illness than do hospitals.  The care is worse, more expensive, and robs the sick of basic civil liberties.

Too often it takes a traumatic tragedy before people act.