Here is the Geraldo Rivera connection, I snipped a few passages and there is much more at the link
http://www.mhanys.org/policy/pp_willowbrook.htm
Geraldo did an expose of Willowbrook Institution
"In the mid-1960s, the movement known as deinstitutionalization began in earnest. Pressure was building to move people out of state run institutions for mental illness, mental retardation and developmental disabilities........
........ In 1971, Geraldo Rivera brought the horrors of institutional existence into our living rooms with his Willowbrook expose, forever changing the role of the state run institutional system. Riveras expose and book on Willowbrook titled, A Report on How It Is and Why It Doesn't Have to Be That Way, was the catalyst that brought about the class action lawsuit primarily responsible for changing this archaic system..........
The Willowbrook case led New York State to adopt sweeping change. Moreover, it became popular opinion that these deplorable conditions were unacceptable for people in state-run institutions, regardless of mental disability diagnosis. In furtherance of the goal to better meet the needs of these distinct and vulnerable populations, in 1978, the state Department of Mental Hygiene was separated into three, diagnosis-based offices The Office of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse, the Office of Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities, and the Office of Mental Health.
Twenty-five years later, our state continues to lack that balanced system of treatment that maximizes both public and non-public resources, referred to by Secretary Morgado.
What was accomplished for people with developmental disabilities and mental retardation has not been attained for people living with mental illnesses.
When looking at what has become of deinstitutionalization, in theory, it was an exceptionally well-intentioned effort.
However, in practice, at least on the mental health side, it has been historically underfunded, and utterly lacking a plan. Because of political impotence here in New York, the census of our psychiatric hospitals dropped by nearly 80,000 before the first dollars finally began to follow people from institutions into the community in 1994....
Because of the failure to create a system to meet the demands of deinstitutionalization, we instead have experienced transinstitutionalization. An entire population of people have moved, by way of police cars and courtrooms, from psychiatric hospitals to prisons and jails.......
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When todays inmate population is considered with the US Department of Justice estimate that approximately 16% of inmates throughout the US have a diagnosable mental illness, we realize that approximately 15,000 individuals with mental illnesses are in correctional facilities in New York, alone.......
So, today, in 2002, 30 years after the Willowbrook expose, and nearly 25 years after the Carey administration declared its intent to fix the mental health system this is, to borrow a phrase from Geraldo, how it is.