the mentally ill was justified under the constitutional police powers of the state (i.e. its power to protect public safety and permit the public welfare) and the doctrine of parens patriae ("the power of the state to act on behalf of the mentally ill who are incapable of protecting their own welfare" (Perlin, p. 7). Perlin said that as of 1961 of 37 states that had statutory procedures governing involuntary commitment of persons to mental institutions, only five couched the operative test for commitability solely in terms of the danger posed by the individual to society or himself (p. 7).
Perlin said in the 1970s "state legislatures embarked on a wholesale revision of the civil commitment statutes" (pp. 130-131). One factor which lay behind this movement was a demographic change which increasingly affected Sunbelt States such as Florida. Trombley (1995, Winter) referred to the "continuing influx of elder persons" (p. 667). He cited Highlands County Florida where 33.5 percent of persons in 1995 were age 65 or older (p. 667).
In addition, practically all states in the 1970s began to experience a rise in the number of homeless persons on their streets, many of whom were perceived by the public to exhibit mental health problems. One reason for the increased incidence of public homelessness was a changing public and professional approach to the treatment of the mentally ill. Perlin said "public awareness of the wretched conditions of many public institutions for the mentally disabled expanded significantly" (p. 7). According to Keilitz (1990, July-August) "reactive community-based mental health treatment and care has replaced that of institutional care as the predominant service delivery approach" (p. 368). Karasch et al. (2003, January) said that in 1994 92 percent of mentally disabled persons who would have been institutionalized in 1955 were not by 1994 (p. 493). In plain
English, a great many mentally ill persons in an era ...