I've had friends who worked in mental health say that it's largely due to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Nurse Ratched, etc. The book and movie made asylums out to be so grim and oppressive that on both a personal level (people didn't want to send family members to these places) and a political level (pressure to defund and deinstitutionalize--sound familiar?), their demise was swift.
Quillette, so take it with a grain of salt, but this is actually a really interesting article about deinstitutionalization:
I've had friends who worked in mental health say that it's largely due to "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." Nurse Ratched, etc. The book and movie made asylums out to be so grim and oppressive that on both a personal level (people didn't want to send family members to these places) and a political level (pressure to defund and deinstitutionalize--sound familiar?), their demise was swift.