Was Executive Order on Homelessness Intended to Expand Forced Psychiatric Treatment?

Was Executive Order on Homelessness Intended to Expand Forced Psychiatric Treatment?

Republished with permission from AbleChild.

The President’s recent Executive Order (EO), Ending Vagrancy and Restoring Order, broadens the definition of “mental illness” to include the homeless, funneling the homeless back into  the psychiatric industry that most likely played a role in the crisis.

The EO is not reform. Recycling human lives through a profit-driven machine that exploits human desperation, trapping millions in a relentless cycle of abandonment has been tried and failed. One must wonder who is advising the President to take such extreme and inhumane measures? Could it be the very industry that will benefit from the increased funding that comes with the EO?

The failure of America’s behavioral health industry is not just a policy flaw—it is a catastrophic betrayal. A ruthless monopoly has taken hold, placed profits far above human lives and left hundreds of thousands of vulnerable Americans abandoned and homeless on the streets. Behind this broken system, major vendors, policymakers, and entrenched interests wield legal shields to evade accountability while pushing dangerous psychiatric drugs that devastate lives.

A stark example is Henderson Behavioral Health in Florida. For years, Henderson treated Nikolas Cruz, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooter in Parkland Fla., with powerful psychiatric drug cocktails but ignored repeated warning signs, labeling him “not a risk.” After years on toxic psychiatric drugs, Cruz turned to street Xanax (benzodiazepine) before murdering 17 innocent people. Families who sued faced cold court dismissals protecting providers from liability—even when negligence was clear. This immunity is no accident—it is an impenetrable systemic shield for the behavioral health industry.

One of behavioral health’s most shameful abuses is patient dumping.  In 2013, Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital in Las Vegas was found to have discharged over 1,500 psychiatric patients.  It was dubbed “Greyhound Therapy” where psychiatric patients were given one-way bus tickets out of Nevada between 2008 and 2013. The discharge orders for one patient should be given a three-day supply of Thorazine, Klonopin and Cymbalta to treat his schizophrenia, anxiety disorder and depression, plus “Ensure and snacks for a 15-hour bus ride.”  Dozens ended up in New York and California.  Other states participated in the patient dumping practice as well when benefits ran out.  In New York, hospitals discharged psychiatric patients onto the streets, sometimes clad only in paper gowns, with no follow-up care. Courts condemned these acts as unlawful and inhumane, yet liability shields still remain and penalties are very low and contracts are almost never cancelled. In fact Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Hospital did not lose their Medicaid Contract.  The broad neglect continues in new forms. This is a major contributing factor to homelessness.

No one denies the problem of homelessness is urgent and painful. But turning to the same industry that helped create the crisis to “solve it” is insanity. Th EO removes legal barriers to forced commitment and expands mental illness to cover homelessness. There is no doubt that some were diagnosed mentally ill in school and put on psychiatric drugs that contributed to the inability to fully function in society and will probably continue given that one in four Americans take at least one prescription mind-altering psychiatric drug.

The dark history of mental health institution shutdowns goes back to the Willowbrook State School Supreme Court ruling in New York. Willowbrook was a hellscape exposed in the 1970s for abuse and neglect. It closed with promises of humane community care, but psychiatry only rebranded. Walls fell, but endless drug cocktails and soaring costs remained. Behavioral health companies grew, went public, ousting local clinics, hiking costs, and lowering care quality. Emergency rooms overflowed; jails became mental institutions. Homelessness among treated patients rose.

Whistleblowers call this the “quieter horror”—vulnerable people dying alone in waiting rooms or overdosed on dangerous drugs while billions are spent annually on ineffective psychiatric drug treatments.

Military and veteran mental health care is not spared. Robert Card, under military oversight, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and treated with mind-altering drugs just weeks before committing a mass shooting. The military faces lawsuits for failed care—not the vendor, Four Winds Hospital. The state of Montana even outsources rebuilding its mental health department to China, raising alarming concerns about oversight and sovereignty.

Central to these crisis’s are entrenched legal shields. Courts affirm mental health providers owe no special duty to protect third parties from patient violence. These protectors embolden a ruthless monopoly prioritizing profit and survival over patient safety and public welfare.

Patient dumping, once condemned, still haunts this system. The U.S. Second Circuit Court ruled hospitals must ensure safe transitions—not just clear beds. Yet liability protections persist, allowing neglect to continue.

Today’s so-called “solutions,” embodied by sweeping executive orders, deepen forced, profit-driven treatment and expand government control. The EO betrays dignity and traps millions in coercive systems protecting monopolies, not healing humans.

In the 1970s, Dr. Loren Mosher’s Soteria Project offered a humane, home-like treatment for first-episode psychosis using minimal medication. It outperformed hospitals but was defunded for threatening pharmaceutical profits. Mosher resigned from the American Psychiatric Association, calling it the “American Psychopharmacological Association.”

The way forward is to elevate humane perspectives, including those of Mosher, Dr. Peter Breggin, and the dissenting voices raised at the recent FDA’s SSRI and pregnancy hearings, that highlighted the dangers of the psychiatric drug model.

The industry’s legacy is a ruthless cycle of abandonment and addiction. Providers take taxpayer money, maximize profits, and destroy lives with impunity. Until liability shields like those protecting Henderson are removed, true provider competition enforced, psychiatric drug violence tracked, and proven community models funded, this tragedy will repeat.

History shows what happens when psychiatry and government unite: rights vanish, lives are controlled, and the powerless silenced. This EO reeks of powerful pharmaceutical insider intervention, not care. Instead of truly addressing homelessness, this executive order expands forced psychiatric control under the guise of care, driven by profit and coercion.

Be the Voice for the Voiceless

AbleChild is a 501(3) C nonprofit organization that has recently co-written landmark legislation in Tennessee, setting a national precedent for transparency and accountability in the intersection of mental health, pharmaceutical practices, and public safety.

What you can do.  Sign the Petition calling for federal hearings!

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