You're right. They still commit some people though.

And I didn't mean to say specific policies are in play. It's the outcry of the surrounding communities that have a loud but powerless group that want people forcibly locked up. (Seattle here)

I'm not so sure it was due to attitudes changing. At least here in Ontario funding for many long term facilities was scrapped in the 1990s as governments slashed budgets for non-essential services to cut costs while higher levels of government downloaded services to lower levels. Smaller municipalities simply cannot afford to fund social services when property taxes are their primary source of funding. The effect was the same as the higher level of governments canceling many of these programs, albeit without having to take as heavy a political hit.

The same thing happened to many low income housing programs in Canada as well. Few people remember that there were once federal programs to provide affordable housing which were also part of the 1990s cost cutting exercises.

Locally we have a few long term retirement homes that are municipally funded, but capacity is very limited with long wait times.

Everyone I talk to in the US is in favor of reopening the institutions. Seeing a man with a gangrenous leg shitting himself while having a conversation with his “invisible CIA handlers” is enough to undo the Reagan era effects of seeing/reading one flew over the cookoos nest