It’s Time to Bring Back Asylums
23rd July 2023
The ongoing saga of the severely mentally ill in America is stirring attention again in a sadly familiar way. In Los Angeles in early 2022, a 70-year-old nurse was murdered while waiting for a bus, and two days later a young graduate student was stabbed to death in an upscale furniture store where she worked. That same week in New York City, a 40-year-old financial analyst was pushed onto the subway tracks as a train was arriving, killing her instantly.
All three assaults, random and unprovoked, were committed by unsheltered homeless men with violent pasts and long histories of mental illness. In New York, the perpetrator had warned a psychiatrist during one of his many hospitalizations of his intention to commit that very crime.