Many Americans are still reeling from the horrific killings of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele, committed by their mentally disturbed and drug addicted son Nick Reiner, along with news reports of a dozen or so other tragic killings and attacks committed by mentally unstable people.
As part of my research for my book Fighting for Justice: Religious Fraud, Mental Illness, and the Collapse of Law & Order, I delved into the entities responsible for the dismantling of mental health laws and both private and state-run mental health facilities, and, more importantly, why those entities destroyed the ability for individuals and families to obtain necessary mental health treatment for the severely mentally disturbed. Undeniably, many private and state-run mental health facilities were abysmal hell holes. But I stand by my argument presented in my book: We currently have many poorly run nursing homes and hospitals, but we don’t eliminate all nursing homes and hospitals and pass laws to throw medically needy people out onto the streets. The solution to badly managed mental health facilities was to reform them, not eliminate them.
The entities at the forefront of changing mental health commitment laws and the shuttering mental health facilities? The American Civil Liberties Union and its comrades in the leftist-leaning medical organizations influenced and pressured legislators to abolish long-term and permanent mental health commitment laws and shut down both private and state-run mental health facilities. They argued that if residents of mental health facilities were “set free” then their mental health would improve and they would become productive citizens. And in case they needed supportive care, the ACLU and its cronies advocated for the creation of “community mental health centers” where the mentally ill could, on their own initiative, receive all the medications and counseling they needed. Legislators were further enticed by the ACLU’s claims that closing down state-run mental health facilities would save hundreds of thousand of dollars. I encourage people to read the following links that help explain all the actors that worked to deny the severely mentally ill the long-term and permanent housing and treatment they need:
The reality is, those who have organically malfunctioning brains, either by genetics, drug use, or both, are simply unable to think and reason properly and function in society. Past and current medicines have proved they are not very effective in helping those with severe schizophrenia and other degenerative mental conditions. For the ACLU lawyers and their like-minded medical “professionals” and supportive legislators, telling us that the severely mentally ill are not all that dangerous to themselves and other people is like trying to convince us that people with Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, ALS, terminal cancer, and any other progressively degenerative disease are really going to be perfectly fine and just need to be “set free” from nursing homes and hospitals — we must stop “stigmatizing” them by pointing out the grim reality of their condition and calling for appropriate compassionate care for them.
How callous, cold-hearted, and how, well … crazy is this decades’ long gaslighting by the ACLU and their equally cruel supporters against our society and against the severely mentally ill.
A few years back I asked a psychiatrist what he thought about our current mental health system. He looked burned out as he answered that it is frustrating for him when he knows that severely mentally ill patients who’ve been involuntarily committed to a mere week or ten days in a mental health ward of a hospital will continue to be self destructive and endanger other people upon release. But a week or two of involuntary commitment is all that the law in all states allow. He agreed with me that our legislators need a reality check, that bills must be proposed, passed, and enacted into law that allow doctors to involuntarily commit severely mentally disturbed individuals into either long-term or permanent mental health facilities. A probate attorney I spoke to echoed much of this same concern. He told me that, in the case of my death threatening, stalking, and clearly mentally unstable cultist brother who calls himself “Pastor,” he could kill me, be put in prison, and probably still never receive any kind of mental health treatment. If we had sensible and necessary involuntary long-term and permanent commitment laws and competent mental health facilities, my husband and I would have been spared the decades of hell my stalking brother has subjected us and many of his other victims to due to his out-of-control mental disturbances. It is horrifically reprehensible that the only “solution” that our states have regarding the severely mentally ill is to wait until they kill someone before tossing them into prison. Prisons are not mental health facilities (of course, the ACLU also advocates for getting rid of prisons, too). How much death and devastation could have been prevented over the past half century if we had sane and compassionate mental health commitment laws and well-monitored facilities?
Every year my husband and I ask our state representative and senator, along with other legislators in our state, to propose, pass, and enact into law involuntary long-term and permanent mental health housing and treatment for the severely mentally ill. In 2025, a couple of our legislators in Tennessee proposed a bill that would allow testimony before a judge by law enforcement officers and medical personnel to request the judge to extend indefinitely a mentally disturbed person’s time in a mental health treatment facility, but sadly that bill didn’t get the support it needed.
How many more thousands of deaths due to mental illness will it take before our legislators and governors practice basic human decency and compassion by enacting very necessary involuntary long-term and permanent mental health commitment laws, and work with private medical care organizations to create competent mental health facilities, much like we have nursing homes and hospitals?
This insanity of failing to prevent the severely mentally ill from harming themselves and others must end NOW. I urge everyone reading this blog article to contact your state legislators and tell them they must deal with reality and get enacted an involuntary long-term and permanent mental health commitment law for the severely mentally ill and see to that competent privately-run, state-monitored mental health facilities are created.
