Oh I 100% agree. We deinstitutionalized for good reason. I will say two things however. Medical ethics and legal protections have come a long way since then. You wouldn't see doctors straight up experimenting on people at least not with legal sanction and the state now has an obligation to provide people attorneys. So using your own lawyer to get aunt Elsa committed while she just at the mercy of the system wouldn't be so easy.
But I would hope that with knowing what we do now about mental illness we would have many layers of intervention before we get to that level.
Imagine if theirs a kid getting into trouble regularly at school because of their mental health status. Rather than wait until that turns into a violent episode that gets the kid in jail or committed the court could assign that kid a mentor. Someone they have to spend 10 hours a week with and who they can call on for anything. That can change the trajectory of a kid's life. We know this because the number one difference between people with mental illness that succeed and those that fail is whether they have a support network.
Court mandated mentoring, support networks and counselling before, not after a major incident are all relatively low touch interventions that would be hugely beneficial. And we do some of this now. It just mostly comes after the criminal justice system has already begun to see the person as a criminal because it usually follows a significant crime.
Of course this cuta against the American psyche. We want to have 100% all our rights with no government intervention until we've proved we shouldn't. Then the government should have radical powers to shape our lives.
But maybe if we could come to see government more like the way doctors see medical treatment. The more unobtrusive it is the more we should allow. And the more intrusive it is, the more we should be nervous of its application.