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To: MtnClimber
A self-help approach to serious mental illness? (sure to come up at trial … so possible check) it seems like Nick should have been institutionalized

Every time this comes up around here, everybody's posting like it's 1963.

There are, effectively, no institutions - or, rather, beds are so scarce they might as well not exist.

My state had 6000 involuntary psych beds in 1955. Now, there are 135, and in a great "breakthrough, exciting step forward" 20 more - TWENTY - were approved in 2018, and are still hung up in litigation.

Kicking your kid out is heartbreaking - I have a friend who had to do it - but when you do it, it is more likely a death sentence from overdose or freezing to death in the winter.

People didn't like what a 6000 bed psych hospital looked like, or smelled like, and they didn't like the people who fed, clothed, and cleaned up the inmates either, for minimum wage or in some cases below minimum wage payments.

The cost of fitting out sufficient placements for people like this kid, and presuming laws get changed to get them off the streets and to allow basic custodial care, is many hundreds of billions of dollars. The cost of letting them roam around slitting blonde girl's throats or dousing young women with gasoline and setting them on fire is also high.

Figure out what you want that doesn't involve unicorns who poop Skittles and ice cream.

Sheesh.

63 posted on 12/28/2025 8:55:03 AM PST by Jim Noble
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To: Jim Noble
The cost of fitting out sufficient placements for people like this kid, and presuming laws get changed to get them off the streets and to allow basic custodial care, is many hundreds of billions of dollars.

True. But a better use of taxpayer funds than having the funds stolen by Somalians.

66 posted on 12/28/2025 9:08:24 AM PST by MtnClimber (For photos of scenery, wildlife and climbing, click on my screen name for my FR home page.)
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To: Jim Noble

“People didn’t like what a 6000 bed psych hospital looked like, or smelled like, and they didn’t like the people who fed, clothed, and cleaned up the inmates either, for minimum wage or in some cases below minimum wage payments.”

Many decades ago I did volunteer work at such a place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danvers_State_Hospital

The vast majority of the patients/inmates belonged there. The people who worked there had a steady (if difficult) job to do and they did it adequately for the most part. It was not a pleasant place but the alternatives (as we have learned) are worse.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence


73 posted on 12/28/2025 11:25:18 AM PST by cgbg ("Your identity is how power treats you.")
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