> Looks like we are back to that situation again. The promise of big Pharma that medication would magically make mental illness able to be treated completely in an outpatient manner has failed spectacularly. We shut down a lot of these mental asylums without providing a replacement.

Big Pharma had nothing to do with the decision to get rid of mental hospitals. That was part of the generalized 70s breakdown of trust in authority and belief that community can do everything if you just believe hard enough. Care in the community never happened and if your entire strategy, insofar as you have one, relies on that, you just get deinstitutionalisation of the mentally ill. The same period saw quadrupling of crime rates. All part of the same phenomenon of social change.