People often use terms today which may sound harmless, without knowing their true origins. Take the words Bedlam and Tomfoolery. Bedlam of course indicates a state of great confusion. And people who act silly, are often said to be engaging in tomfoolery. Bedlam of course anyone will tell you is short for St. Mary of Bethlehem, a notorious old insane asylum in London. It later became a hospital for the mentally ill, and still is in operation today. Tomfoolery is a more obscure term. Tomfoolery is derived from the archaic term Tom-Fool. Tom o'Bedlam and Poor Tom are names formerly applied to the demented and developmentally disabled, because they often ended up in Bedlam. (Also interestingly insubordinate wives were sometimes placed in Bedlam. Couldn't they just get a divorce?) Bedlam was the first attempt at humane care for the mentally ill. People there lived under appalling conditions by today's standards. People paid a penny to observe the patients like specimens in a zoo. But you have consider how life would've been for these people otherwise. Mentally ill and developmentally disabled people were often beggars. And beggars had a very low status back then. Queen Elizabeth I famously said she'd rather be a beggar woman than a queen married. Because people apparently never even helped beggars back then (how'd they eat?). I at least am inclined to give them credit for at trying to care humanely for these people. (Also I recently read the patients there were given unlimited amounts of beer for lunch, which is interesting. You know, drinking water was often contaminated back then.) IAE care for the mentally ill has of course greatly improved since the old days of Bedlam. But we must always remember the past. And it is perhaps ironic then that when we use terms Bedlam and tomfoolery, we are.
Not here. "In the United States, people with serious mental health conditions are more likely to have contact with law enforcement than receive any form of treatment. Additionally, ten times more people are held in jails and prisons than in state hospitals—a number is rooted partially in divestment, with the number of state hospital beds shrinking by 94 percent since the 1950s. State hospitals themselves were often punitive, and in the 1960s Congress passed a law to replace them with community mental health centers. But few of those centers were ever built, and governments have failed to put money into programs like crisis response teams or treatment options. Instead, funds have flowed into jail and prison systems, which are now the largest providers of mental health care in the country." Locking up People with Mental Health Conditions Doesn’t Make Anyone Safer | Vera Institute
