Asylum 2

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

Victims of mental illness have not ceased to exist, especially with commonly available psychosis-inducing drugs. Instead of big asylum institutions, they cycle through what this author calls the "invisible asylum" of the jail, the street, and the emergency room.

He got a close look at how the city of Olympia, Washington, handles a growing population of the addicted, the mentally ill, and the homeless. They opened a publicly-funded "mitigation site" with 150 tents for shelter and access to services. But it's more of an open-air asylum, with less protection than the old asylums.

A city employee who helps manage the site estimates that almost all of them have both substance-abuse and mental illness to deal with. Police call it the "Thunderdome" because of the raucous nights with shouting, assaults, overdoses.

At Olympia Municipal Jail, officers see the same faces again and again. One of them is Hannah, a meth user and bi-polar, who sometimes lives with her abusive boyfriend at the mitigation site. Her mother once came for her, then left saying that Hannah is her boyfriend's responsibility.

(cont'd tomorrow)

from City Journal