As we continue to confront a broken mental-health system in which prisons serve as de facto mental institutions, we look back with a slightly romanticized nostalgia at the bucolic, but costly, asylums of yesteryear (“Bring Back the Asylum,” Review, May 19). Our nostalgia is enhanced by the reality that, post-deinstitutionalization, most community-based treatment centers proved inadequate and insufficient. Howard Husock and Carolyn D. Gorman rightly suggest, before rushing to reopen “empty and eerie” institutions, we explore...

Source: Wall Street Journal June 03, 2018 15:00 UTC