Back when I first became a social worker the most mentally ill were kept longer than 60 days in state mental hospitals and then came Ronnie Reagun ridin' in to change all that... Deregulate the corporations and let them police themselves and deinstitutionalize the mentally ill and let us social workers try to police our messed up clients out in the real world...

Well, both have been miserable failures...

When I left social worfk it took an act of Congress tyo get a "green warrant" on a mentally ill person... I mean, I had quite a few that were as messed up as this guy and I'd make the calls and the magistrate would ask me if he or she had a gun to anyone's head???

Things haven't changed unless it has become even harder for social workers to get folks off the street and into treatment... This is also a story about a failed idea about how to treat our mentally ill...

B~