Posted on 12/19/2012 8:24:27 PM PST by San Rafael Blue
This is an invitation to spectulate together. After the Sandy Hook horrors, we, as a first tier society need to start talking about this. Was it a mistake that most of the large mental institutions in this country have been shut down? Was it mistake to pull thousands of very sick people out of safe structured environments and throw them helter skelter, into the 'bowels' of our social systems? Some of these folks were ready and willing, some others will never be socially intact, or at least not for a long while. At the very least, perhaps the government may recruit, train and finacially support professional caregivers who are qualified and willing to create and maintain a safe place for these children of God to live. It's time to consider how else school integration can be done, without taking too much time or focus away from students who do not have these disabilites or predicaments. It can be done, but we cannot be afraid of a long open discussion.
For the Dems, closing them has served its purpose — innumerable nuts running around committing terrible crimes — now allows the destruction of the Constitution.
Their plan worked far better than they hoped for.
Barry and his ‘RATS have it all wrong. They need to stop worrying about gun “control” and start asking themselves why teenagers will kill themselves and others so easily without even thinking about it. What kind of people is this society producing? Guns aren’t the problem. Only a total commie moron would think that they are. The ‘RATS need to face up to the truth and fix the real problems. Our public schools. Violence from the Hollywood sewer pipe. Violent video games. Violent hip hop “music”. The loss of respect for life. The removal of God from American life by the liberals as they try to pass themselves off as God.
Of course the Demonrats would lose a large portion of their base.
I live in Indiana in a city with HUGE state hospital wfrom which many many many many "residents" have been discharged, even against their own will, because of liberal nonsense . It is sad to see the staff, the patients, the community, speaking against putting these residents back on the streets or into so called halfway houses, when they were incapable of handling this enormous challenge. Can you imaagine living in a sheltered, protected, healthy, environment because you were mentally challenged.....and the dumped into the streets with a hearty good luck, see ya!!! disaster
Madness in the Streets : How Psychiatry and the Law Abandoned the Mentally Illby Rael Jean Isaac and Virginia C. Armat
Some of these mental hospitals were bad places where people were badly treated but I think that it had a lot to do with the institutions being far from the families which made it hard for them to check up on the treatment of their family members. If the states opened secure facilities perhaps in every county so that family could keep an eye on things it would probably stop patient abuse from getting out of hand.
Secure mental hospitals can have walled in yards where inmates can go outside to exercise and enjoy the outdoors. There could be activities to keep the inmates engaged and families could come by to visit their loved ones. If the inmates are good enough condition they can visit their homes or go on shopping trips, go to the beach, movies etc.
I sometimes think that if I were a person with a lot of money, I would donate an empty building such as a school or convent to be used for a local secure facility.
My 15 year old cousin wears a diaper and doesn’t know his ABCs, but he is required by law to attend school and pretend like it matters. He is not violent so a mental hospital would not be required for society’s protection - but it sure is silly to put him in a regular public school with his so-called peers.
There are violent children (through no fault of their own) whose parents lovingly adopted them only to discover their child has Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Most such parents cannot afford one of the few private schools available to such children so the public schools become the depository until prison takes over the job.
We need to change the model from warehouses of drugged up and abused patients to something more humane but also safer than our current disaster of a system. One place to start is by not insisting everyone must have a K-12 education.
I wish there could be publicly funded religious mental institutions.
Go on MichaelSavage.com. I believe that on page 2 there is a picture of him when he was on his highschool rifle team. There is a group of teenage boys with their rifles which they used to bring into highschool for rifle practice. Isn’t that a hoot! I would love to see the pc inebriated generation actually see this picture with their own eyes. This would cause people to think what could possibly be different between the conditions today and the conditions of 50 years ago. Fifty years ago we had a strong Judeo-Christian ethic. The country was also ruled by common sense not pie-in-the-sky politcal correctness. Juvenile deliquents were put away, they did not go to school and the dangerously mentally ill were put in mental hospitals.
Conservatives should drive home the connections between the Democrat party and the ACLU along with other far left groups. The Republicans are so wimpy, they are afraid of saying boo against the Democrats. The Dems on the other hand never pass up an opportunity to demonize the Republicans.
may be a little late for that.
I agree totally.
This is one thing that needs to be paid for by the state. Insurance cannot cover the necessary long term institutionalization.
And if that is the case, where's the doctor that wrote the prescription??
how horrible....
Pelosi, Hairy and Bronc0 go first.
I wonder what Geraldo Rivera will say about that?
We are succumbing to the “we must do something” syndrome.
There is really nothing that we can do to prevent these incidents other than do as is done in Israel; post arm guards at public gathering places (restaurants, malls, parks, schools, hotels, office blocks etc.) and screen all who enter. Even then a determined jihadi could get through.
Those who argue for the end of the 2A like Norm Stamper (former police chief here in Seattle) are seriously out of touch with why the 2A exists and what it represents.
If we start locking up the lunatics, the Democrats will be short a heck of a lot of votes.
“Has the time come to re-open some of the larger mental hospitals?”
Actually, it was never time to close them — not completely.
I grew up in a town with a state school (mentally retarded youth, mostly) one town to the east and a state hospital (mostly adults and some pretty hard cases) one to the west. On top of that a neighbor up the street a couple miles was one of the people instrumental in getting the institutions emptied out onto the communities.
I was friends for a while with a guy who’s mother was in the state hospital around 1974 until she was “placed” in the community. I would go with him to visit his mother once in a while and she along with her former inmate friends would often go back to the SH to “visit” because they had trouble coping on the outside. She later killed herself by jumping in front of a car; something she had a history of. Over all, she would have been happier and lived a LOT longer institutionalized.
(As an aside, I have never been comfortable in a group of liberals because it felt too much like my visits to the womens ward in the state mental hospital. Maybe you’d have to have been there to understand what I mean.)
From an outsider’s point of view, indiscriminate de-institutionalization seemed to be a failure; there were just some people who couldn’t function on their own. It did harm to some of the former inmates AND the communities they ended up in.
JMHO,
Peet
I think there is a legitimate need for mental institutions, provided that the admissions are carefully screened and the institutions are properly monitored and managed. Funding nowadays would be a larger worry.
I did some regular volunteer work at a state school for the retarded in the early 1970s, so I have no illusions about such places. They were depressing environments (to me anyway), but I have no doubt those people were better off and happier than living in prison or under some bridge. They ate regularly, were kept clean and safe, and were encouraged to socialise.
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