Robert Westman, the Minneapolis shooter who killed two young children and wounded 18 others, had no business walking the streets, free to indulge his school-shooter fantasies and act on his dangerous paranoia.
Westman, who briefly toyed with changing his gender at age 17, even having his mother legally change his name to "Robin," abandoned transgenderism a few years later. The record shows a young man with numerous mental health conditions that were apparently never addressed, either by his family or the school system. He was disruptive in class and was sent several times to the office of the principal, who never formally punished him.
His family called the police to his home on numerous occasions, but the record fails to show why. It's assumed he was threatening family members. Westman's mother knew her son was suffering from behavioral and social issues, but failed to act. This is not unusual, as parents are almost always in denial about their child's mental illness.
"Taken together, these details reveal a young person in need of serious intervention. In a video uploaded shortly before the attack, Westman whispered, “There’s bugs in my skin.” This suggests he may have been experiencing psychotic symptoms, writes Christina Buttons of the Manhattan Institute.
Even if Mrs. Westman had tried to get help for Robert, the chances are good that he couldn't have found it in Minnesota, or likely any other state. Robert Westman needed to be placed in a residential treatment center for mentally ill youth, an in-house mental health facility where he would have been off the streets and no danger to others.
But liberal policies that equate institutionalization for any length of time with incarceration have destroyed residential treatment, leading to a catastrophic loss of beds and extraordinarily dangerous people allowed to walk the streets or worse, placed in jails, emergency rooms, or sent out of state.
"According to AspireMN, the statewide association of service providers, Minnesota had nearly 2,500 licensed residential beds in 2005. By 2023, that figure fell to 1,586—a 36 percent decline," writes Button.
With too few residential beds, Minnesota increasingly sends children out of state. Other kids spend months on waitlists, board in emergency rooms, or end up in juvenile detention when no treatment bed is available. According to the Star Tribune, some 12,000 children in Minnesota boarded in hospitals in 2023 for days, weeks, or even months. At Children’s Minnesota alone, kids collectively spent over 1,600 days waiting for an open placement, and emergency mental health visits have nearly doubled in just five years.
Many youth now board in juvenile detention centers due to lack of bed space; according to one estimate, as many as 20 percent of children in detention centers are there “due to their mental illness.” Capacity in facilities that serve court-involved youth has also declined by as much as 40 to 50 percent since 2015, according to a special report by the Star Tribune.
Some of these facilities were shuttered due to policymakers’ opposition to institutional care. With no adequate replacements, the closures have left another critical gap in the system.
With few options, parents forced to deal with sometimes violent or disturbed children often give the kids to the state to handle.
"Data from Minnesota’s Department of Children, Youth, and Families show that nearly 12 percent of foster care entries last year involved children placed not because of abuse or neglect, but for treatment," writes Button.
Washington only made the problem worse. This irrational fear of institutionalizing the mentally ill led to the federal government punishing states that build more residential treatment facilities.
The decline in residential treatment is the result of policy choices and a workforce in crisis. Minnesota, like many progressive states, has grown reluctant to place children in residential programs, often equating them with “institutionalization.” In line with the federal Family First Prevention Services Act, which limits federal support for residential care and directs it instead toward outpatient treatment and community-based services, Minnesota reported a 32 percent drop in youth entering out-of-home care between 2018 and 2022.
State policymakers resisted building Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities—a Medicaid-funded program created to serve youth with severe psychiatric needs—for nearly two decades after the designation was established, not opening the first one until 2018. As a result, the state lacks the infrastructure to meet demand, though efforts are now underway to expand capacity.
Even if beds in residential treatment centers are available, the facility is usually severely short-staffed and unable to care for any additional patients.
Related: Yes, Please! Trump Works to Reopen Insane Asylums
This is what happens when you allow activists to dictate important mental health policy.
Thinking of residential treatment as inherently harmful, or as something that should be used only as a last resort, is misguided. The sector has evolved significantly over the years and now encompasses a wide range of treatment models and evidence-based practices. Programs combine individual and group therapy, psychiatric oversight, and accredited schooling, and research shows that many youth leave having made measurable gains.
The same attitude can be seen in dealing with the problem of mental illness and homelessness. This reluctance to do anything that would smack of institutionalization has to be changed. We have a five-alarm mental health crisis in the United States, and no one prescription can address it.
If that means building more beds and institutionalizing people for long periods of time, so be it. Congress must pass the necessary reform legislation to accomplish it.
