We emptied the state hospitals and called it progress. Then we acted shocked when the street, the jail and a random airplane seat became the new ward. In 1955 this country had about 558,000 people in state mental hospitals. We shut most of them down. The promise was community care. What we got was a revolving door, a shortage of long-term beds and families who cannot force treatment until someone is already a danger. Severe illness did not disappear. It just lost a building. That is why you are watching a woman take her pants off on an American Airlines flight, get told to get dressed, and sleep it off. Deputies meet the plane. She says she does not remember. Case gets passed around. No place to put her. No standard that says you do not get to do that in public and walk. The old asylums had real abuses and those needed to be fixed. Instead we abolished the institution and left the sickest people to ERs, cops and strangers in seat 9C. Jails are the new hospitals. Sidewalks are the new day room. Everyone films it and moves on. Open the institutes back up. Locked, staffed, long enough to actually treat people who cannot live on their own. Stop pretending a pamphlet and a 72-hour hold is a mental health system. How many more flights, trains and school hallways before we admit the experiment failed?