Counterpoint: Mental hospitals' awful past shows they're no path forward

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In "Hard facts on drugs, mental illness must be faced" (Sept. 30), author Nick Magrino presents an argument for institutionalizing Minneapolis' homeless population. He uses shocking and disturbing language to describe the unhoused that I won't repeat. He doesn't explore Minnesota's or America's history with institutionalization, or provide evidence as to why he believes this is the solution beyond the need to remove homeless people from the streets.

I know nothing about Magrino's background or expertise with homelessness, mental health care or housing. He didn't present any of that in his piece. If he had worked in any of those fields, he would have knowledge of America's horrific background with institutions and why they no longer exist.

Psychiatric wings have been a part of American medicine since the creation of public and private hospitals in the early 19th century. Many institutions were built across the U.S. under the Kirkbride model, funded through state tax dollars. A Kirkbride building still exists in Fergus Falls, Minn.

People ended up in psychiatric hospitals not only for mental illness but for addiction, senility (growing old), or being difficult or hysterical.

State funding declined for these programs and much of the therapeutic programming shut down, focusing instead on research and new medical treatments. This included electroshock, forced sterilization and lobotomies.

Several investigative journalists went inside institutions with hidden cameras, exposing the horrific living conditions for those forced into psychiatric care — people shackled to beds in their own waste, graphic violence from staff, poor living conditions and much more.

From the 1960s to '90s, many psychiatric hospitals shut down after the rise of the disability rights movement seeking to place people in state-funded programs and services.

Minnesota organizations and programs that serve people with disabilities are required by law to share the history of psychiatric hospitals and the abuse within them as part of training for new employees. This is because we do not want to go back.

People struggling with mental illness, behavioral issues and substance use disorders are not treated in institutions today for a variety of reasons. Institutionalization has an ugly history in America that cannot be forgotten, but there is also no evidence that institutionalization works.

Most do better in small programs where they get one-on-one attention. Smaller programs are easier to staff and tend to have less client-on-client conflict in my experience.

Social service organizations that provide mental, behavioral, and chemical health services need more funding from the state of Minnesota for the care and services they already provide. Every agency in Minnesota I'm aware of is struggling financially to care for the clients they already have, knowing there are hundreds, if not thousands, more who need their services.

We don't fund the system we currently have and then keep asking why it's failing.

There are a million things we could and should do to address homelessness in Minnesota and in Minneapolis. Institutionalization is not one of them.

Frances P. Stevenson is communications manager for a Minnesota-based social service agency.