My otherwise conservative sister thinks mental health treatment should be widely available free. Mental health is more witchcraft than science. What exactly would you give away? Drugs? Shock treatments? Involuntary incarceration? What qualifies as needing treatment? Too fat? Mental health issue. Spend too much? Mental health issue. Believe in guns and the second amendment? mental health issue.
Psychology has been called upon to fill the gap that abandoned spirituality left, and it can’t. That’s at best like calling in a bookkeeper to fix your problem with being unable to turn a profit.
Sometimes spirituality does work under the covers of psychology, and we get what we call the Christian psychologist. And these persons are often useful in the Lord’s ministry, but still the framework that they have to fit tends to limit their usefulness. And they have to be careful to stay out of the secular psychological stereotypes which are transcended by the grace and love of the Lord. Some manifestations of agape love can too easily be called things like “codependency” and “enabling” when they are not, they are the sincere work of the Lord with a definite plan. I had a chance to see how that system worked, and it works better than some preachers give it credit for, but now I can see how a really great gospel will transcend it.
Another danger here is the state-ifying of the trade. As goofy as it has gotten, at least it has stayed private. Once it serves the state, it will be abused, not might but will. The old Soviet Union was the warning case for this.
What could pierce through the confusion, destruction and gloom would be a resurgence of gospel power, something beyond the “churchianity” of most of the 20th century. Bluntly put we need to call on the Lord to be saved, and that from top to bottom. There’s nothing in our secularized system, absolutely nothing, that we can withhold from the Lord and expect to turn out well.
“My otherwise conservative sister thinks mental health treatment should be widely available free. Mental health is more witchcraft than science. What exactly would you give away? Drugs? Shock treatments? Involuntary incarceration? What qualifies as needing treatment? Too fat? Mental health issue. Spend too much? Mental health issue. Believe in guns and the second amendment? mental health issue.”
If you saw my sister, on and off her depression meds, you might have a different view. She needs them, realizes that, takes them, side effects and all. (She does not, never has used drugs or alcohol)
Some people take themselves on and off the drugs they need, leaving the casual layperson with the idea that the drugs do no good.
There are plenty of legitimate mental problems, best treated with drugs.
And there is plenty of misdiagnosis too.
Many with mental issues, turn to not only their prescribed drugs (on and off) and drugs/alcohol—making matters much worse.
Not uncommon is an alcoholic who gets a doctor to prescribe depression meds, for alcohol is a depressant, and it works.
Now we have a compounded problem. Misuse of alcohol and psych meds.
Get the person sober, off alcohol, and the depression MAY go away, too.
obammycare provides free mental health care!
After you pay $1500 a month premiums and $6,000 in deductibles, and a 40% co pay.
Whadda deal
What will be free?
Are you white, conservative, christian, believe in the Constitution, or a gun owner?
Well then you are nuts.
Can you ask your sister if she has a package deal in mind? Maybe the labotomy-castration-shock-isolation-heroine routine where you lose everything that works and just don’t care anymore? S’Bilious should show us how by going first. Remember she’s the chick that showed us how to blow our nose on our shirt sleeve to keep from spreading snot ( I guess) around?
My neighbor across the street [55 years old] has been on full disability for a decade now. Anger-management issues.
Off-topic somewhat, but his sister [58 years old] has been on disability for 15 years because her knees keep giving out -- has had three replacements. Of course, she weighs about 300 lbs., too.
It's worse than that. Since when did a shrink ever have an interest in "curing" the mentally ill?
How much does 'free' cost?