once upon a time

it was considered inhumane to put mentally people in mental homes, removed from the community's consciousness. The psychiatric hospitals closed down and the patients now live "in community". We see them shopping but that doesn't mean we treat them any more humanely. So why if this philosophy was right do we now do to the elderly and frail and infirm what we did not think was right to do to the mentally ill? They get compassionate treatment there but why are underpaid nurses the only ones who interract with the elderly? It ought to be a responsibility of all in a community to show compassion. The "locking up" of compassion in an out of the way nursing home does not present the opportunity for reminding the rest of us that compassion is POSSIBLE by all of us. Perhaps when a sense of community returns?