The United States is witnessing the return of psychiatric imprisonment | Jordyn Jensen

From wellness farms' to expanded involuntary commitment policies, the US is embracing psychiatric incarceration under the guise of compassion

Across the country, a troubling trend is accelerating: the return of institutionalization - rebranded, repackaged and framed as modern mental health care". From Governor Kathy Hochul's push to expand involuntary commitment in New York to Robert F Kennedy Jr's proposal for wellness farms" under his Make America Healthy Again (Maha) initiative, policymakers are reviving the logics of confinement under the guise of care.

These proposals may differ in form, but they share a common function: expanding the state's power to surveil, detain and treat" marginalized people deemed disruptive or deviant. Far from offering real support, they reflect a deep investment in carceral control - particularly over disabled, unhoused, racialized and LGBTQIA+ communities. Communities that have often seen how the framing of institutionalization as treatment" obscures both its violent history and its ongoing legacy. In doing so, these policies erase community-based solutions, undermine autonomy, and reinforce the very systems of confinement they claim to move beyond.