JASON WHITLOCK: President John Kennedy, Jordan Neely, and America’s reprobate mind.
Twenty-two days before his assassination, John F. Kennedy signed the most important piece of legislation of his presidency – the Community Mental Health Act.
The act provided federal funding for mental health and research facilities across America. It fueled the United States’ de-institutionalization movement, social and medical reform that shut down “insane asylums” and treated the mentally ill with psychiatric drugs.
The Community Mental Health Act, signed on Halloween 1963, arguably stands as the Emancipation Proclamation for the mentally ill.
I know this because yesterday a Twitter user sent me down a mental health rabbit hole with a single tweet.
“US population 1955: 161 million
US population 2023: 332 million1955 mental asylum population: 559k
2023 mental asylum population: 35kThis is the real crisis”
If only there was a solution: