Has the time come to re-open some of the larger mental hospitals?

Dec. 19th 2012 | Floyd A. Logan

[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.

[RitchieAprile]

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.

[Rastus]

If we start locking up the lunatics, the Democrats will be short a heck of a lot of votes.

[Peet]

“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

[TexasRepublic]

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.