Elderly people are being attacked at nursing homes in increasing numbers by younger people who are mentally ill, stronger and easily able to inflict harm on the older residents.

The AP reported that over the past several years, nursing homes have become dumping grounds for young and middle-age people with mental illness.

Information obtained through the Freedom of Information Act showed nearly 125,000 young and middle-aged adults with serious mental illness lived in U.S. nursing homes last year. That’s 41 percent more than in 2002, when nursing homes housed nearly 89,000 mentally ill people ages 22 to 64.

The mentally ill patients make up more than 9 percent of the nation’s nearly 1.4 million nursing home residents.

Not all mentally ill people become violent, and clearly those who need nursing home care should have access to it.

Nursing homes fill a void left after state mental institutions were closed in the 1960s following discoveries of rampant abuses.

And the mentally ill are able to fill beds in nursing homes that might otherwise be vacant since more older people are healthier than in previous generations and more able to stay in their own homes.

But if mentally ill people are put in nursing homes, there should be a way to keep them separate from the elderly.

Mixing the populations is a prescription for danger.