I don't think that's fair. Reagan was simply following a national trend, a trend advocated by both civil rights activists and psychiatrists. The best succinct history I've found is this 1984 New York Times article, "How Release of Mental Patients Began", https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-me....
TL;DR: Reagan was trying to cut the budget and closing mental health hospitals was considered a win-win by everybody. That it happened under his governorship makes your statement literally true, but nonetheless very misleading.
It's important to recognize the history because when trying to address the problem now we hear the same retort--pills and freedom. But we got here precisely because we miscalculated the benefit of pills and the costs of an overly simplistic conception of freedom.
TL;DR: Reagan was trying to cut the budget and closing mental health hospitals was considered a win-win by everybody. That it happened under his governorship makes your statement literally true, but nonetheless very misleading.
It's important to recognize the history because when trying to address the problem now we hear the same retort--pills and freedom. But we got here precisely because we miscalculated the benefit of pills and the costs of an overly simplistic conception of freedom.