An excellent piece, Andy. Two things I’d like to add. The first: Michael Shellenberger did a terrific talk on the subject here https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2002494700906033359. One thing that Shellenberger brings up is that Reiner himself could/should have used his Dem party clout to get Newsom to enforce laws that would protect both insane people and those they might harm. The second thing I’d like to add: we had an incident in October in Goleta that underscores the failure of our system to protect citizens from violence by mentally ill people. At the Ralph’s market in Magnolia Plaza, a mentally ill man tried to attack another man in the parking lot and stabbed the man’s dog. We knew about this man, who seemed to be homeless. We live near the open More Mesa field. In May, a young man knocked at our door, begging us to help him get his girlfriend to safety. This man was violently threatening them and the guy at our door had hidden his girlfriend and run (he was very fit) to our street for help. My husband helped get his girlfriend to safety as he asked the man to file a police report. The man and his girlfriend both refused. We called the police. They did a thorough search, but couldn’t find the mentally ill man.
Cut to October at Ralph’s when the mentally ill man attacked the other man, who wrestled the knife out of his dog and ran into Ralph’s. The mentally ill man followed and during the attempt to arrest him, the police shot and killed him. We shop at Magnolia. Only one hour before, my husband was parked right at the spot where the mentally ill man made the attack. It could have been my husband. And it could have been me, because often we park right there and I stay in our car with the window down while my husband goes into Ralph’s. I could have been stabbed in the neck by that man with no ability to defend myself.
I greatly resent the fact that this has never been adequately reported on in the Santa Barbara media. It has never been raised that this should not be happening in Santa Barbara. It should have opened questions about how to deal with our violent mentally ill people. Instead, there was a lot of sympathy for the mentally ill guy in our local Next Door and Reddit forums.
I feel sorry for the mentally ill. That’s why I want for there to be a change in the stupid “tolerant” ways in which our Democrat government is dealing — or rather, enabling violence from people who are not in control of their actions. It’s cruel to the souls of the mentally ill as well as their victims. As a psychiatrist friend of mine said to me “It’s definitely a big mess — I think there’s a lot of people who would be better off living in a supervised institution and that it would be better for the community as a whole as well.”
Seconding the recommendation for Michael Shellenberger. His book “San Fransicko” is full of fascinating tales, info and ideas, he’s super-worth following on X, and there are a bunch of good interviews with him on YouTube. He knows California really well, is all too familiar with Bay Area lib/radical politics, and sees right through the homelessness and drug-addiction industries.
In the last graph it appears that the incidence of mental illness was relatively stable until 2016 - 2017 when it began to increase and then in 2020 it appears that the slope or rate of increase in mental illness increased further. Beginning in 2016 the anti-Trump rhetoric increased and people were told that a candidate and eventual president was Hitler, going to put blacks in chains, has policies that are a threat to democracy, would accelerate global warming to the destruction of life on earth, etc. The increase in 2020 corresponds with the covid scam and the mass vaccination with an unsafe and ineffective therapy. I think it is enough to make anyone crazy.
I have a son that’s homeless, and unsure of his drug use but I know there’s mental illness. He refuses any kind of help whatsoever. It’s just painful to watch. I haven’t seen him in a year. All I have left to do is just pray.
My perspective: we are in a culture, particularly in California (need I say Santa Barbara), that promotes promises, “caring”, and sympathy, over sound results. If we become objective and hold accountable those expending the dollars and making the decisions, things will change.
Our society has to separate ideas from results, and focus on measurable outcomes. We are a nation that has landed people on the moon, received images back from rovers sent to Mars, been to the deepest depths of the oceans, fought and won the most important battles so we’re free and not speaking German exclusively, and more.
Those pulling the strings in California always blame racism, lack of money, weather, big oil, corporations, Trump, and you name it, to avoid accountability . And they keep their power base. Regardless of the billions wasted, unaccounted for, or recycled through NGO’s and non-profits to their campaigns, friends, and their pockets.
The time for change is now, but as long as we promote “promises” over results, we will fail.
Thanks, Andy, for this sobering examination of mental illness and society's refusal to face its impact on the mentally ill and their families. This is personal for me, my dear nephew was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in his senior year of high school. Not a drug abuser at all, this kid was playing varsity water polo, getting good grades, had lots of friends, and looking ahead to a wonderful life. ALL was taken from him. Rob Reiner had the money to get the best care possible for his son, and it didn't save him. Our system is such that the mentally ill must commit a crime, a felony, before they can be "treated." And then, of course, the institution is prison. My sister is her son's only advocate these past 14 years. Yet, she cannot sit in on psych. meetings because he has "rights." She fights with a revilving door of mental health staff who have litle idea of his background or what meds work and don't. when the public institutions were shuttered 50 years ago, local communities were supposed to take over -- with funding from the states and feds. The money never came. And here we are. Rob Reiner's family is high profile, but multiply them by thousands of families enduring same, without resources.
I am so sorry for your nephew and your family. My uncle Thomas Frost was the same profile as your nephew: well liked, good tennis player, good student. It came on in his teens and then, when he should not have fought in WWII, he was stationed in a submarine, the worst and came back with PTSD on top of schizophrenia. He became one of the mentally ill in LA’s Pershing Square, so my father and his family had him hospitalized in Camarillo for decades. I sat next to him when he was brought to all family dinners and functions and my granny, to her credit, visited him regularly. In the 80s he was able to live in a halfway house in Hollywood where apparently he was well liked and well doctored with his meds. When he died on the street from a heart attack a surprising number of people showed up for his memorial and talked about how much they liked him. I am pleased that he was tended in this way and able to live as much of a life as he could. Camarillo was not great in many respects at that time and my family fought a lot on his behalf. But I think it turned out as well as it could. Institutionalization until a schizophrenic can be safely on meds may be the kindest thing for everyone.
We know mental illness can manifest itself with age and drug/alcohol abuse, but what about political activism? The brutal murder of Reiner and his wife is despicable, tragic and dastardly, but was it predictable given Reiner’s non- stop rage against the President and Conservatives in general? Did Reiner’s own psychopathy influence his son? Why is it MANY celebrities on the left seem to struggle with mental illness, gender dysphoria and drug addiction?
I have no idea as to the validity of this, but mental illness does seem to affect those that consider themselves “liberal” more than others? Granted, mental illness does affect all walks of life.
We do know that Reiner was at a time, working feverishly with others in the Intelligence Community to push the Russian interference narrative in the 2016 campaign. So much so that he formed a formal working group to bring down Trump, which appeared to be sanctioned by the CIA and Hollywood.
Was Trump right in asserting that it finally drove Reiner (and son) over the edge?
My own anecdotal view while observing many on the left is one of pronounced unhappiness and despair, even rage. Could it be because many liberals consider themselves to be atheist as well which serves as a common finding?
Just look at social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, Nextdoor and Edhat to judge for yourself.
Great points. The Russian interference effort was a hoax based on fabricated intelligence and everyone should have known it. If mental illness is abandonment of objective reality, the Russia hoax and other efforts to undermine Trump satisfy that definition of mental illness. TDS is a mental illness.
"At a Saturday press conference, Sauschuck said Card had a history of mental illness, but there was no evidence that he had ever been involuntarily committed."
I loved Regan but his biggest mistake was shutting down mental health facilities. He turned our streets into psych wards and our policemen into social workers. Nobody is even talking about doing anything about it because they have watched time and again how the left pays bail to release these people back into society and their activist judges refuse to take them off the streets. We all know if we opened up a mental facility anywhere the left would sue any time a drug addled criminal was trying to be admitted there and they would focus 100% of their money and energy on forcing Trump and his allies into institutions. Change my mind.
The left existed before Reagan closed the facilities down. Reagan didn't 'close' the facilities as most think. Reagan did something similar to what Trump is doing. He was hell bent on doing the opposite of Carter. Anything Carter created, he wanted undone. In the Omnibus Act, he drastically cut funding, effectively shifting the financial burden to the states, knowing they did not have the money to fund the program.
The left sued to change a provision in the mental health laws. They, and this was the ACLU, who sued, and there was a Supreme Court Case - O'Connor v. Donaldson in 1975. Yes, it was a CONSERVATIVE court that penned that ruling.
Mental health is a huge problem. A tragedy for families, for the patients themselves and for society. Before Reagan there were state mental health hospitals where treatment was available. I know from family experience that even relatively short term confinement and treatment could be life changing. What are the options now?
"Another issue we need to deal with is how is it that our society is producing so many people that have mental health issues. As it turns out, just as we don’t force any type of institutionalization on people dealing with severe mental health problems, neither do we treat drug users as criminals. Yet, drug use is surely a public health and safety issue."
The first sentence is interesting and IMO misleading. Percentages work much better. If in 1900, 5% were mentally ill, and in 2000 it is still 5%, then yes, there are more people, but due to population increase, it will be more people. To me, the real question is, has the percentage increased? Not over 13 years, as the chart shows, but over a 50 or 100-year period. There is also context that is missing. It has become more acceptable for people to admit mental health issues now than it was 30 or 50 years ago.
Force is a thorny issue. How do you force anything on anyone and not be a fascist/authoritarian state? Heck, that even ties into the drug use issue. I do not drink, do drugs, smoke, or even drink coffee. But I do not want others to be unable to use any of those. I learned how prohibition failed.
Have we ever had a president who called someone a “lowlife” for wanting something like the Epstein files to be released and who wrote of said person (Massie) enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas?
An excellent piece, Andy. Two things I’d like to add. The first: Michael Shellenberger did a terrific talk on the subject here https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2002494700906033359. One thing that Shellenberger brings up is that Reiner himself could/should have used his Dem party clout to get Newsom to enforce laws that would protect both insane people and those they might harm. The second thing I’d like to add: we had an incident in October in Goleta that underscores the failure of our system to protect citizens from violence by mentally ill people. At the Ralph’s market in Magnolia Plaza, a mentally ill man tried to attack another man in the parking lot and stabbed the man’s dog. We knew about this man, who seemed to be homeless. We live near the open More Mesa field. In May, a young man knocked at our door, begging us to help him get his girlfriend to safety. This man was violently threatening them and the guy at our door had hidden his girlfriend and run (he was very fit) to our street for help. My husband helped get his girlfriend to safety as he asked the man to file a police report. The man and his girlfriend both refused. We called the police. They did a thorough search, but couldn’t find the mentally ill man.
Cut to October at Ralph’s when the mentally ill man attacked the other man, who wrestled the knife out of his dog and ran into Ralph’s. The mentally ill man followed and during the attempt to arrest him, the police shot and killed him. We shop at Magnolia. Only one hour before, my husband was parked right at the spot where the mentally ill man made the attack. It could have been my husband. And it could have been me, because often we park right there and I stay in our car with the window down while my husband goes into Ralph’s. I could have been stabbed in the neck by that man with no ability to defend myself.
I greatly resent the fact that this has never been adequately reported on in the Santa Barbara media. It has never been raised that this should not be happening in Santa Barbara. It should have opened questions about how to deal with our violent mentally ill people. Instead, there was a lot of sympathy for the mentally ill guy in our local Next Door and Reddit forums.
I feel sorry for the mentally ill. That’s why I want for there to be a change in the stupid “tolerant” ways in which our Democrat government is dealing — or rather, enabling violence from people who are not in control of their actions. It’s cruel to the souls of the mentally ill as well as their victims. As a psychiatrist friend of mine said to me “It’s definitely a big mess — I think there’s a lot of people who would be better off living in a supervised institution and that it would be better for the community as a whole as well.”
Seconding the recommendation for Michael Shellenberger. His book “San Fransicko” is full of fascinating tales, info and ideas, he’s super-worth following on X, and there are a bunch of good interviews with him on YouTube. He knows California really well, is all too familiar with Bay Area lib/radical politics, and sees right through the homelessness and drug-addiction industries.
You can’t mention San Francisco politics and mental illness without mentioning Scott Weiner.
https://youtu.be/eLZ2vIOrDiU?si=Og0pq8TFR-rub8p8
In the last graph it appears that the incidence of mental illness was relatively stable until 2016 - 2017 when it began to increase and then in 2020 it appears that the slope or rate of increase in mental illness increased further. Beginning in 2016 the anti-Trump rhetoric increased and people were told that a candidate and eventual president was Hitler, going to put blacks in chains, has policies that are a threat to democracy, would accelerate global warming to the destruction of life on earth, etc. The increase in 2020 corresponds with the covid scam and the mass vaccination with an unsafe and ineffective therapy. I think it is enough to make anyone crazy.
I have a son that’s homeless, and unsure of his drug use but I know there’s mental illness. He refuses any kind of help whatsoever. It’s just painful to watch. I haven’t seen him in a year. All I have left to do is just pray.
I am so sorry, Matt.
Sound points, Andy.
My perspective: we are in a culture, particularly in California (need I say Santa Barbara), that promotes promises, “caring”, and sympathy, over sound results. If we become objective and hold accountable those expending the dollars and making the decisions, things will change.
Our society has to separate ideas from results, and focus on measurable outcomes. We are a nation that has landed people on the moon, received images back from rovers sent to Mars, been to the deepest depths of the oceans, fought and won the most important battles so we’re free and not speaking German exclusively, and more.
Those pulling the strings in California always blame racism, lack of money, weather, big oil, corporations, Trump, and you name it, to avoid accountability . And they keep their power base. Regardless of the billions wasted, unaccounted for, or recycled through NGO’s and non-profits to their campaigns, friends, and their pockets.
The time for change is now, but as long as we promote “promises” over results, we will fail.
Thanks, Andy, for this sobering examination of mental illness and society's refusal to face its impact on the mentally ill and their families. This is personal for me, my dear nephew was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in his senior year of high school. Not a drug abuser at all, this kid was playing varsity water polo, getting good grades, had lots of friends, and looking ahead to a wonderful life. ALL was taken from him. Rob Reiner had the money to get the best care possible for his son, and it didn't save him. Our system is such that the mentally ill must commit a crime, a felony, before they can be "treated." And then, of course, the institution is prison. My sister is her son's only advocate these past 14 years. Yet, she cannot sit in on psych. meetings because he has "rights." She fights with a revilving door of mental health staff who have litle idea of his background or what meds work and don't. when the public institutions were shuttered 50 years ago, local communities were supposed to take over -- with funding from the states and feds. The money never came. And here we are. Rob Reiner's family is high profile, but multiply them by thousands of families enduring same, without resources.
I am so sorry for your nephew and your family. My uncle Thomas Frost was the same profile as your nephew: well liked, good tennis player, good student. It came on in his teens and then, when he should not have fought in WWII, he was stationed in a submarine, the worst and came back with PTSD on top of schizophrenia. He became one of the mentally ill in LA’s Pershing Square, so my father and his family had him hospitalized in Camarillo for decades. I sat next to him when he was brought to all family dinners and functions and my granny, to her credit, visited him regularly. In the 80s he was able to live in a halfway house in Hollywood where apparently he was well liked and well doctored with his meds. When he died on the street from a heart attack a surprising number of people showed up for his memorial and talked about how much they liked him. I am pleased that he was tended in this way and able to live as much of a life as he could. Camarillo was not great in many respects at that time and my family fought a lot on his behalf. But I think it turned out as well as it could. Institutionalization until a schizophrenic can be safely on meds may be the kindest thing for everyone.
We know mental illness can manifest itself with age and drug/alcohol abuse, but what about political activism? The brutal murder of Reiner and his wife is despicable, tragic and dastardly, but was it predictable given Reiner’s non- stop rage against the President and Conservatives in general? Did Reiner’s own psychopathy influence his son? Why is it MANY celebrities on the left seem to struggle with mental illness, gender dysphoria and drug addiction?
I have no idea as to the validity of this, but mental illness does seem to affect those that consider themselves “liberal” more than others? Granted, mental illness does affect all walks of life.
We do know that Reiner was at a time, working feverishly with others in the Intelligence Community to push the Russian interference narrative in the 2016 campaign. So much so that he formed a formal working group to bring down Trump, which appeared to be sanctioned by the CIA and Hollywood.
Was Trump right in asserting that it finally drove Reiner (and son) over the edge?
My own anecdotal view while observing many on the left is one of pronounced unhappiness and despair, even rage. Could it be because many liberals consider themselves to be atheist as well which serves as a common finding?
Just look at social media platforms such as Facebook, X, Instagram, Nextdoor and Edhat to judge for yourself.
Great points. The Russian interference effort was a hoax based on fabricated intelligence and everyone should have known it. If mental illness is abandonment of objective reality, the Russia hoax and other efforts to undermine Trump satisfy that definition of mental illness. TDS is a mental illness.
Thank you for bringing this sobering information forward
Maybe it will provoke discussion and create better outcomes for our citizens w substance abuse and mental health issues
I read this article titled "The Steep Price of Tolerance" by Andy Caldwell
that is really about Mental Illness. Unfortunately, "Tolerance" can get people
killed as shown here in this Mass Shooting Incident among many.
https://apnews.com/article/maine-shooting-what-we-know-40e373f7f2f0e0fb012ad4b26f4b78cd
"At a Saturday press conference, Sauschuck said Card had a history of mental illness, but there was no evidence that he had ever been involuntarily committed."
Howard Walther, member of a Military Family
I loved Regan but his biggest mistake was shutting down mental health facilities. He turned our streets into psych wards and our policemen into social workers. Nobody is even talking about doing anything about it because they have watched time and again how the left pays bail to release these people back into society and their activist judges refuse to take them off the streets. We all know if we opened up a mental facility anywhere the left would sue any time a drug addled criminal was trying to be admitted there and they would focus 100% of their money and energy on forcing Trump and his allies into institutions. Change my mind.
The left existed before Reagan closed the facilities down. Reagan didn't 'close' the facilities as most think. Reagan did something similar to what Trump is doing. He was hell bent on doing the opposite of Carter. Anything Carter created, he wanted undone. In the Omnibus Act, he drastically cut funding, effectively shifting the financial burden to the states, knowing they did not have the money to fund the program.
The left sued to change a provision in the mental health laws. They, and this was the ACLU, who sued, and there was a Supreme Court Case - O'Connor v. Donaldson in 1975. Yes, it was a CONSERVATIVE court that penned that ruling.
Mental health is a huge problem. A tragedy for families, for the patients themselves and for society. Before Reagan there were state mental health hospitals where treatment was available. I know from family experience that even relatively short term confinement and treatment could be life changing. What are the options now?
Reagan closed mental health clinics due to a court order. You can’t hold people against their will unless they are a threat to themselves or others.
Local communities were given funds to manage this issue, however they took the money and spent it elsewhere.
Andy,
"Another issue we need to deal with is how is it that our society is producing so many people that have mental health issues. As it turns out, just as we don’t force any type of institutionalization on people dealing with severe mental health problems, neither do we treat drug users as criminals. Yet, drug use is surely a public health and safety issue."
The first sentence is interesting and IMO misleading. Percentages work much better. If in 1900, 5% were mentally ill, and in 2000 it is still 5%, then yes, there are more people, but due to population increase, it will be more people. To me, the real question is, has the percentage increased? Not over 13 years, as the chart shows, but over a 50 or 100-year period. There is also context that is missing. It has become more acceptable for people to admit mental health issues now than it was 30 or 50 years ago.
Force is a thorny issue. How do you force anything on anyone and not be a fascist/authoritarian state? Heck, that even ties into the drug use issue. I do not drink, do drugs, smoke, or even drink coffee. But I do not want others to be unable to use any of those. I learned how prohibition failed.
Have we ever had a president who called someone a “lowlife” for wanting something like the Epstein files to be released and who wrote of said person (Massie) enjoy what may be your last Merry Christmas?
Speaking of mental illness…
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/12/25/jimmy-kimmel-jokes-about-fascism-in-an-alternative-christmas-message-for-britain-00706615