ABSTRACT
Here, then, are the roots of deinstitutionalization’s failure. Most laws governing the treatment of mentally ill individuals assume that such individuals are competent to accept or reject treatment, with the sole exception of dementia. Yet, the contemporary research has established that up to half of all individuals with severe psychiatric disorders are not competent to assess their own need for treatment. e consequences of this misunderstanding have led to increasing numbers of mentally ill individuals who are homeless, incarcerated, and victimized, as well as increasing numbers of individual who commit homicide and other violent acts. is misunderstanding underlies one of the great social disasters of late twentieth-century America. … (Virginia’s) is one of the most stringent state commitment statutes in the United States and another example of how changes in mental illness laws in the 1970s and 1980s continue to have real consequences. After the fact, it became abundantly clear that Cho was, and had for some time been, psychotic. … irty-two families were left to mourn and wonder what went wrong. (p. 122)
e Commonwealth of Virginia, in a state of shock and rightfully fearful of extreme liability exposure that was later conŸrmed in multimillion dollar settlements to survivors, established a special panel to investigate the Virginia
Tech massacre. Months earlier, because of aggressive advocacy from constituencies dedicated to reversing the legacy of deinstitutionalization ravaging the lives of the mentally ill, as well as their families and communities, over 100 separate bills on mental health reform had already been introduced in the Virginia legislature.
