According to some authors, the problem began with drugs like Lithium. Back in the 1950s, researchers did some early experiments comparing the effectiveness of Lithium to conventional psychotherapy for treating problems like depression. The results were very positive in favor of Lithium, so much so that some claim the test could never be duplicated because denying Lithium would be cruel.

As a result of these tests, advocates for the mentally ill went to court and won several key cases. If a mentally ill person's illness could be successfully treated with medication, there was no need to keep them institutionalized. These court cases forced many states to release patients from hospitals. Unfortunately, once released many of the patients stopped taking their medication and relapsed. It's said that a high percentage of the homeless population are mentally ill and no longer taking their medication.

So, what do we do? The courts have ruled that the mentally ill can't be institutionalized against their will unless they constitute an immediate danger to themselves or others. There's no way we can force people to take their medication against their will, either.

As for the insurance companies not wanting to pay for mental illness treatment, some of that comes from abuses in the industry itself. My wife is an RN and has worked from time to time in psychiatric hospitals. She saw quite a few cases where patients were treated as long as their insurance kept paying and immediately pronounced "cured" when the coverage ran out. All too often, a mental health professional will talk about the need for "lifetime treatment" at $100 an hour, which automatically sounds suspicious. There are a lot of quack therapies out there, too, like the two women here in Colorado who killed a child during "rebirthing therapy" a couple years ago. All of these things undermine confidence in the mental health profession.