E. Fuller Torrey

Beginning in the 1960s, long-term mental patients were released from public psychiatric hospitals back into society—a social experiment referred to as “deinstitutionalization.” E. Fuller Torrey claims in the following viewpoint that deinstitutionalization is responsible for the large numbers of mentally ill individuals living on the streets, some of whom pose a threat to public safety. Torrey, a Washington, D.C., psychiatrist and the author of Out of the Shadows: Confronting
America’s Mental Illness Crisis
, contends that society must provide hospitalization for the severely mentally ill; furthermore, laws should be reformed to allow for the occasional involuntary commitment of some mentally ill individuals.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. According to Torrey, why did the idea of deinstitutionalization have appeal across the political...