Shut down of mental care hospitals during the 80's.
This is part, it's a multi angle issue though.
It’s Cthulhu. He’s finally awakening in R’lyeh!!!! Iä! Iä! Cthulhu fhtagn!!!!
I hate how I rated this optimistic, shows my hope for the future.
Ok, we are going to get a bit long, as mentioned before I agree shut down of the mental wards is a big thing, long term care/treatment is the only option for many people, there are people who need that could do as well as possible and be less a drain on society with that. But now it's cut for a lot of reasons some good, some bad.
Short term holds are spinning doors for many people who need long term placement, they go in 10-90 days stroll out and back in there or jail in a week or so. Group homes just aren't a thing anymore due to costs, some people are stuck in short term places in my state for 6+ months.. you might have to wait for some mentally handicapped person to pass away before you get into a group home.
Culture is the other big thing, two fold one we are exposed to things at break neck speed and humans really don't decompress soak in things as fast as we get it. This is just a theory of mine, the second as mentioned as we are forced to diversify, we are hiding out, those people don't act like us, look like us or hold same values but we aren't allowed to even interact with them with out risk socially so we all hide on netflix. Churches etc are losing out because of this, it's not as much the aspect of higher powers it's that was a huge part of humans social time historically speaking.
The other thing, we over think our abilities, we humans are really starting to see on many aspects mental health effects of our behavior. A person who has depression, is more likely to drink, more likely to drive drunk as they drink to much, now it's not a justification, not at all. Too many people turn it into that and hand wave bad behavior. If being beat as a kid forced you or made you on a path to be destructive we humans wouldn't have made it to the stage we had fire lol.
So we are also trying to understand (and erred in victim hood imho) the balance of our free actions vs things we're pushed too. We also now know, some mental illness is genetic and puts you on a dark path even with help or spotting early.
Healthcare being a mess in the western world esp in the mental sense isn't helping either. People often won't get treatment who can due to fear of backlash in the US we have HIPPA laws but ask around I can say I've seen it snuck around, crafty people do and fire your ass for being "crazy" I'm sure you know someone who has had it happen to them or someone close. Same goes with other illnesses.
Lastly, it's a culture more than anything, we have better options for treatment for many people and choose quick fixes, like oh here gobble some SSRIs it's ok Daddy made you his hand puppet for the first 6 years of your life.
So tl;dr
It's a perfect storm of fucked, but it could always be worse.