On September 1, 2025, former President Donald Trump reignited a contentious debate over mental health care in America, telling the Daily Caller that he would support reopening what he repeatedly called "insane asylums"—institutions largely shuttered in the late twentieth century after decades of criticism for their harsh conditions and questionable effectiveness. Trump’s remarks, delivered in an interview with Reagan Reese of the Daily Caller and widely circulated soon after, have drawn both sharp rebuke and some support across the political spectrum, exposing deep rifts in how the nation thinks about mental illness, public safety, and the legacy of deinstitutionalization.
Trump did not mince words. "Well, they used to have them, and you never saw people like we had," he said, referring to the era when large state-run psychiatric hospitals dotted the landscape of states like New York and California. He continued, "They released them all into society because they couldn’t afford it. You know, it’s massively expensive... But we had, they were all over New York. I remember when I was growing up... they released them into society, and that’s what you have. It’s a rough, it’s a rough situation." According to the Daily Caller, Trump specifically cited the closures of institutions such as Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital and Bellevue Hospital in New York, blaming the state’s Democratic leadership in the 1980s for the policy shift.
There’s a historical tangle behind Trump’s claims. As reported by multiple outlets, including the Daily Caller and others, the deinstitutionalization movement began in earnest during the 1980s, propelled by a mix of court rulings, budgetary constraints, and a growing consensus that large, custodial asylums were inhumane and ineffective. The movement was championed by then-President Ronald Reagan, whose administration slashed federal mental health funding, leaving states to shoulder the burden. The result: tens of thousands of patients were discharged from sprawling, often decrepit institutions, and mental health care increasingly shifted to community-based settings—at least in theory.
Trump’s recollections, however, were not entirely accurate. While he asserted that Creedmoor Psychiatric Hospital had been "closed by a certain governor," the facility still operates today, albeit at a much-reduced capacity. Bellevue Hospital, meanwhile, no longer runs its old psychiatric hospital but continues to admit mental health inpatients, according to the Daily Caller. Trump’s tendency to conflate or misstate such details has become a hallmark of his rhetoric, but it hasn’t lessened the impact of his broader message: that the closure of asylums has left American cities with a crisis of untreated mental illness on the streets.
In his interview, Trump painted a stark picture of danger and disorder. "You can’t have these people walking around... so dangerous, so dangerous. And they can live to be 85 years old," he said. He went on to describe, in a rambling aside, scenes of "crazy" women "screaming" and "spitting" at men, concluding, "These guys are just — they wouldn’t — but they can’t do it. Now they can do it. So I said, 'they spit, we hit.' Right?" The comments, as reported by the Daily Caller, have drawn criticism for their dehumanizing tone and lack of nuance, particularly from mental health advocates who argue that most people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators of violence.
Trump’s proposal comes against the backdrop of a persistent and visible crisis in American cities. The deinstitutionalization movement, while rooted in good intentions and hard-won legal reforms, has not always delivered on its promise of robust community-based care. As The Independent and others have noted, the population of large psychiatric facilities has dropped by over 90 percent since the mid-twentieth century. Yet many of those discharged found themselves with nowhere to go, cycling in and out of jails, emergency rooms, and short-term psychiatric units—or simply living rough on the streets. Some clinicians and politicians, frustrated by this state of affairs, have argued for a partial return to longer-term psychiatric care, though few have called for a wholesale revival of the old asylum model.
Trump, for his part, has long signaled support for bringing back asylums, at least for the most severely ill. On the campaign trail, he reportedly promised, "When I am back in the White House, we will use every tool, lever, and authority to get the homeless off our streets... And for those who are severely mentally ill and deeply disturbed, we will bring them back to mental institutions, where they belong... with the goal of reintegrating them back into society once they are well enough to manage." The Daily Caller notes that neither Trump nor his interviewers defined precisely what kind of institution he envisioned, nor how they would differ from the infamous asylums of the past.
Cost, too, is a concern Trump acknowledged. "It’s massively expensive," he said, referring to the old asylum system. Critics of deinstitutionalization have pointed out that the expense of running large hospitals was one of the main reasons states closed them in the first place—a point Trump himself conceded, even as he blamed the closures on political leaders like former New York Governor Mario Cuomo.
Yet the former president’s comments have not been limited to mental health. In the same Daily Caller interview, Trump was pressed by far-right activist Laura Loomer to expel all Chinese students from U.S. universities, based on the unfounded claim that they are "Communist spies." Trump flatly rejected the idea, saying, "It would be very insulting" to China and would "hurt the system" by depriving American institutions of much-needed revenue. "It’s the right thing to do" to allow Chinese students to study in the U.S., he insisted, offering a rare moment of moderation in an otherwise hardline conversation.
Trump’s remarks on mental health have nonetheless dominated the headlines, with critics arguing that a return to "insane asylums" would revive a failed and inhumane system. They point to decades of abuse scandals, lawsuits, and exposés that led to the closure of such facilities in the first place, as well as the development of new psychiatric medications that make many long-term hospitalizations unnecessary. Advocates for modern mental health care stress the importance of community treatment, supportive housing, and voluntary services—approaches that treat people with mental illness as individuals, not problems to be hidden away.
Supporters of Trump’s proposal, meanwhile, cite the visible struggles of homeless and mentally ill people in cities across America, arguing that the current system is broken and that the pendulum has swung too far toward civil liberties at the expense of public safety and patient well-being. They point to tragic incidents involving untreated mental illness and violent crime, as well as the burden placed on police and emergency rooms ill-equipped to handle chronic psychiatric conditions.
The debate over asylums, then, is about far more than nostalgia or cost-cutting. It’s about the kind of society Americans want to build—and the balance between compassion, safety, and responsibility. As Trump’s comments make clear, it’s a conversation that is far from over, and one with no easy answers.
