 Notwithstanding the passage of city ordinances prohibiting the practice, it continued.The practice of patient dumping continued for several decades, and in the 1960s it was brought back into the public eye by the media, but not much was done to resolve the issue.Many homeless people who have mental health problems can no longer find a place in a psychiatric hospital because of the trend towards mental health deinstitutionalization from the 1960s onwards.