There had been multiple exposures of abuse throughout Nation's systems such as over-medicated individuals kept on back wards for years without clinical justification. However, primary force leading to widespread closures was economic. Providing free room, board, medication and psychiatric care to chronic and seriously impaired mental health population was expensive and failed to result in any positive financial or political benefits.

Theoretically, these marginally functional individuals would now be cared for by a network of community service agencies that would spring up on a local basis. Unfortunately, such a network never existed and failed to develop for same economic challenges State Institutions had faced. Counties continued to provide outpatient services, with occasional brief local hospitalizations for those who became unstable, and nonprofit organizations were founded, and often financially foundered, to provide services.

With few resources and cognitive and emotional inability to connect with few programs available, mentally ill started to drift into streets where they often self- medicated with illegal drugs. Within 10 years, police and social service agencies estimated that possibly one third of growing homeless population had mental disabilities.

There are many issues on minds of US voters these days, but according to national polls, environment ranks ...um... somewhere above hemp policy and just below humane treatment for Teletubbies.

People are, of course, justly concerned about top issues such as health care, terrorism, and jobs. But environment actually has a role to play in all of those areas. Below are some examples of how this is so.

ENVIRONMENTAL VOTING CAN MEAN BETTER HEALTH

"If you have your health, you have everything"--so goes old cliche. We usually don't think too much about our health until we have a problem. Diseases usually creep in on us slowly. They're very patient, waiting until our defenses are down far enough for us to be susceptible.

The health of environment--the quality of air we breathe, purity of water we drink, condition of land we grow our food on--are prime factors in health of our bodies. We protect health of our families by reducing pollution, by encouraging better farming practices that result in more nutritious agricultural products, and by getting toxic chemicals out of products we use every day.

Politicians are busy jousting about who has better plan for improving health care, but they're mostly silent on most basic health issue--keeping disease-causing pollutants out of environment and out of us.

ENVIRONMENTAL VOTING CAN MEAN BETTER SAFETY

What are terrorist targets that have most potential for causing problems? Here are three.

- Ports -- We're still inspecting only a fraction of more 6 million containers arriving in US coastal cities each year. Many security experts think it's just a matter of time before terrorists sneak a nuclear, chemical or biological device into one of them. By supporting concept of "buying local," our leaders could begin reducing traffic in our ports and thus make problem more manageable. This would also reduce huge level of pollution associated with product transport. Instead, our leaders pursue ever-grander "free trade" schemes that will INCREASE port security problems.

- Chemical Plants and Other Facilities That Use Chemicals -- A terrorist strike at a facility that manufactures or uses toxic substances could release clouds of poisonous chemicals. And we're not only talking about heavy-duty chemical and industrial plants; many water-treatment facilities, for instance, still use toxic forms of chlorine for disinfection, even though safer alternatives are available. Those who currently control our federal government have been far too passive in addressing problems with high-chemical-use industries.