Did Ronald Reagan cause the proliferation of untreated mental illness in America?

I've been under the impression that the Reagan Administration de-funded institutional health care for Americans with mental illness.  In fact, I understood that he closed down federal support for programs and hospitals which treated the mentally ill, and this lack of support might be the genesis of the recent wave of untreated mentally ill who have gone on to become mass murderers.

After an evening spent exploring this hypothesis online, I'm less certain than I was that it was 'all his fault". 

There are a variety of online resources which address this issue, and there are so many that it's nearly impossible to understand the situation in the 1980's which ... one way or the other ... may have contributed to mass murders today.

One online resource asserts that the defunding of mental hospitals did not originate with Reagan, but with JFK. 

But more to the point—the POLICY of the federal government in particular to move away from hospital care for those deemed mentally ill did not derive from Reagan, but a President before him named Kennedy. JFK was the first one who proposed, and had passed, policies with started such a process ,,,

Another (online) source asserts that the Reagan administration was solely responsible for the defunding of mental health programs:

Then came Ronald Reagan. Within a month, the Office of Management Budget announced it would curtail the budget of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), phase out training of clinicians, interrupt research, and eliminate services. Cutbacks to staff followed; chaos ensued. Experienced people left, others remained in government service but were forced into menial jobs. Trained professionals were reassigned to labs to dissect dead rats; science writers were reassigned to typing pools. The Mental Health Systems Act would be disappear. Instead, the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (1982) would merge money for mental health programs into block grants, and with fewer dollars going to the states. They had the discretion to use them however they saw fit, often to perpetuate programs already deemed problematic. The pretense for all this was the president's concept of a "new federalism."
"Many of our dreams were gone," wrote Rosalynn Carter in Helping Someone with Mental Illness. "It was a bitter loss."

This latter opinion is that which is most familiar to me; the Reagan Administration  deliberately cut funding for all mental health programs, much to the discomfort of the priorities of the preceding *(Carter) administration.

Whether or not any of these presidents were responsible for the societal havoc we know today, I'm unwilling to offer an opinion.   But I would be willing to accept that none of them were without blame.   It seems to me that between conflicting priorities, an unawareness of changes in the American psyche, and an unwillingness to accept blame for the sins of preceding administrations ... these may have been among the least effective presidents in terms of protecting Americans from domestic havoc.

SO ... we have THREE Presidential Administrations   (Carter, Reagan; Kennedy) which may or may not have been primarily responsible for, or may (or may not) have contributed to, the proliferation of untreated crazy people who are now shooting up our fellow Americans.

And I'm reluctant to point the finger at any of the 3 presidents who lead the nation during the decade when our country gravitated from "a nation of individuals" to "a gun-free zone". 
(With an entirely different interpretation of "gun-free zone" than we had known before.)

Who was it who let the crazies prevail?

I have no immediate interest in imposing my own personal opinion on the reader. 

But I do wish to challenge each of you to do your own research, and express your developed opinion on ...


WHO LET THE DOGS LOOSE????