It has been 70 years since the first antipsychotic medication, chlorpromazine (Thorazine), was introduced in the United States. This made it possible for the first time to effectively treat the psychotic symptoms of individuals with severe mental illness. This in turn created one of the largest social experiments of the twentieth century—the discharge of more than half a million severely mentally ill individuals from state mental hospitals to live in their communities. A minority of these individuals continued to take the antipsychotic medication needed to control their symptoms, and their transition has been a success. However, the majority of discharged patients did not receive ongoing treatment in the community, resulting in many of them ending up homeless or incarcerated in the nation’s jails and prisons. Consequently, individuals with severe mental illness are better off today in almost every other Western country than in the United States, despite the fact that we spend more on such services than do other countries. The mental illness services available for the money spent are a national disgrace.