Can There Be Good Mental Asylums? [NYTimes.com]

Samantha Sangenito 2/26/1512:00 PM

To the Editor:

I read “The Modern Asylum,” by Christine Montross (Op-Ed, Feb. 18), proposing “a new model of long-term psychiatric institutionalization,” with incredulity — both as one who was hospitalized in a state institution and as the director of the documentary “Kings Park: Stories From an American Mental Institution.”

It’s right to decry our growing reliance on the penal system for mental health care, but make no mistake: The old state hospitals were prisons, only we didn’t have release dates. And it is folly to think that we would do any better today in a time of budget cuts, mounting fear of mental health conditions, and misconceptions about what constitutes effective treatment.

[For more of these letters, go to http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02...al-asylums.html?_r=2]

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