Posted on 08/22/2019 9:20:59 AM PDT by bitt
My dad brought this up years ago....talking over the 1935-to-1955 era in a rural area of Alabama. If two relatives signed a letter to the county judge of a relative being ‘unfit’ and a ‘nutcase’....the judge would have them come down and swear on this...then bring the relative in question to him and he’d put the guy/gal up for 30 days at a state facility for an exam. The guy or gal usually didn’t come back. He emphasized that you never kidded about this business.
Looking around today...with the population in Alabama of about 4.8-million...I’d take a guess that more than forty-thousand probably need to be in a mental facility. Maybe even 20-percent of the state prison population would readily fail a mental exam. But I don’t think anyone wants to recreate that environment.
Respectfully to PDJT, please consider the following.
The sad truth is probably that Americans struggling with personal problems aren’t necessarily mentally ill per se. Yes, they undoubtedly need counseling. But they also need to have their public school, anti-USA socialist indoctrination corrected.
Ten.something years until the earth ceases to exist because of politically correct global warming for example. That’s depressing.
Start with Congress.
I’ve been pondering this for a long time, and think I may have a workable system.
1) Individual States will fail at this because it costs too much money.
2) Nobody would, could or should trust the federal government to do this.
So the solution might be for groups of states to form a compact, with some ground rules:
1) One of the states would host the facility, with the other states paying for how many mentally ill they want to put in there.
2) Two be placed there, doctors at the local, county and state level would have to independently agree that they need to be confined. And the doctors at the facility from each state would have to vote on admission. But once in, to be discharged, the opposite process would be used before they could be released.
3) The facility would be subdivided into areas best suited for them, such as a coma and dementia area. An untreatable mental illness area. A treatable mental illness area. A criminal mental illness and dangerous criminal mental illness area. And I’m sure other areas as well.
“We do not have the infrastructure to make all these people “patients””
On one end of the spectrum, all bad behavior is defined as either normal or a sickness needing treatment, and these individuals are cared for and respected.
On the other end of the spectrum, which is war, those that threaten are shot dead.
Remember: it was the Left who drove most mentally ill out of appropriate care.
The laws are there now, and through fear of lawsuits, ETC. they are not really followed. When someone is a danger to themselves and/or others there are laws that allow them to be detained and taken to mental health facility. Law enforcement has this tool but they can only get the person in the door and the problem is it is a revolving door. Law enforcement hesitates, they know most will be released right away. They don’t want to be accused of violating the person’s rights.
Part of the issue is money; most insurance only wants to pay for 28 days inpatient treatment. Medicaid and other public pay doesn’t want to pay at all so a real struggle with that. Few people have the resources to self pay for care.
Part of the issue is the way we see the issue of Constitutional Rights and we don’t want to take away their rights. People may be deemed a danger to themselves or others, detained- then with some medication, counseling they are deemed to no longer be a danger and allowed to sign themselves out. Often this happens before even a real thorough mental assessment which disturbs me.
Current thinking is the person has to be considered a danger to themselves/others right then- at the time. If they calm down then the situation changes legally or realistically it does and they can say they don’t want treatment.
It is next to impossible to keep someone in mental health treatment against their will, and even if they are willing it is not easy because of the money. Unless the person has actually acted out in a dramatic or horrible way they are not going to be held.
This needs to change, but we don’t want it to be easy to detain people in that way yet some people need to be. Where to draw that line? That will be the tricky part to determine. The money has to be spent, but needs to be spent wisely too.
Our nation is intended for a moral people. Establishing laws to protect from violence and treat the violent is humane and responsible when carried out with a heart for protecting and encouraging. When those law become political tools for tyrants society suffers.
It’s even far worse than that..
Psychiatrists are often sued by the survivors and their families where there is attempted or actual suicide by a patient.
Psychiatrists cannot legally drop a patient even for non payment unless another psychiatrist is found for the patient.
A patient can be psychotic, then resolved through medication. Then they forget their meds and are psychotic again. This process sequence repeats itself over and over.
Involuntary committment will only be done by a government psychiatrist as a non government psychiatrist will never get paid for their wotk.
[The laws are there now, and through fear of lawsuits, ETC. they are not really followed. ]
BS. More mental health “treatments” mean more crazed shooters, not less.
Be very, very careful what you wish for.
True mental illness - paranoid schizophrenics with a history of violence, true psychotics and sociopaths with a demonstrated propensity for harming themselves and others for example is one thing, someone who is a functioning bi-polar or suffering from depression or OCD or PSTD, alcoholism or drug addiction is quite another. And in actuality, the majority of people with a diagnosed mental illness, even many schizophrenics are not violent and are more likely to self-harm or be the victim of violence against them then they are to harm others.
But what is concerning about your statement is what and more importantly who defines who is and who isn’t a “nutjob” to be locked up in an asylum for the rest of their lives.
It’s all fine and good until the government, perhaps not under this administration but a future one, decides certain political views or religious beliefs are symptomatic of an underlying mental illness. The Soviets were and the Chi-Coms and others are still good at this. Heck I’m seeing posts on this very thread advocating for locking up democrats and liberals in asylums – jokingly I hope…. But imagine what hardcore leftists would want to do to us? “What? You do not believe in gender fluidity?” “What? You like to hunt, eat meat and have guns?” “Global Warming Denier!”
But even if we build new and re-open up the asylums and promise to only lock up the true “nutjobs”, many of these recent mass shooters would not fit the bill for commitment - in most cases only forensically - not until after the fact.
Some of these mass shooters had been on the radar, though often not as a credible threat as to committing mass violence but more often as being “creepy” or “weird” or “anti-social” or “socially inappropriate”, being a bully or have being themselves bullied in school, or for espousing hateful rhetoric - anti-Semitic or racial, and while some had some did have a history with the mental health profession and probably should have been confined, others had no real warning signs warranting involuntary commitment.
The Las Vegas shooter (and spare me the conspiracy theories) didn’t seem to be on anyone’s radar, nor was the Virginia Beach shooter. And speaking of Virginia Beach, workplace, the disgruntled fired employee or the domestic revenge killing all too often have few prior warning signs. Sure a lot of people get pissed when they get fired from a job or break up with a girlfriend or their marriage breaks up and sometimes those people are angry and say unfortunate things in the heat of anger, but should we involuntarily commit them all to a mental institution (for life) just in case? What about veterans with PSTD or the Autistic or those on the Asperger spectrum? And while I find them despicable and detestable, what about people who are virulent racists or anti-Semitic? Do we lock up people for thought crimes and throw away the keys based on only their thoughts and opinions. What other “thought crimes” or “pre-crimes”?
I do not disagree that some people may be better off, for their own good if they are not able to benefit from or are non-compliant with outpatient treatment and unable to care for themselves otherwise and or for the safety of others, I also do not think that mass life-long commitment of the mentally ill card blanche is the answer either.
For one thing, one unintended consequence will be for people with mental illnesses -- think depression or PSTD - may be for them not to seek treatment out of fear of involuntary commitment and an undetermined length of hospitalization.
The other is the deplorable conditions in many of the state run “insane asylums” of the past. To deny that many of these hospitals were true “snake pits”, often filthy and rife with abuses both from staff and other patients, and why some incarcerated in them, when given the chance preferred living homeless on the streets is telling. There is also the question of where forced psychiatric medications vs a person’s civil rights come into play, of forced ECT treatments and of the horrific but once medically accepted practice of lobotomies.
But the other hard reality is that to build, open and run these new asylums in a way that is both humane and ethical and medically sound, providing real treatment and not just warehousing people with mental illnesses for life in rubber rooms, is going to be very difficult and quite expensive. So are we, as a society, us tax payers, willing to pay for it? Because most of the people we are talking about do not have private insurance and for those that do, insurance coverage for long term hospitalization for mental illness is sorely lacking.
As to the problem of the homeless – street people, yes some are mentally ill – schizophrenics, etc. – but most of them, the vast majority are alcoholics and or drug addicts. There is treatment for addiction but it doesn’t work in all cases and some have what is called “dual diagnoses”, in other words they have a mental illness of some sort and are “self-medicating” with alcohol or street drugs. They also commit crimes to feed their habit.
I guess that rather than incarceration in a prison or allowing them to remain “homeless”, an involuntary commitment in a mental hospital where they may get some help, 3 squares and a bed and chance to recover and get out one day and live a normal life may be the answer but if the conditions inside are no better than life on the streets, other than we don’t have to look at them or deal with them except to pay for their upkeep in an institution, as minimal as it may be, is not the answer either.
The bottom line is that locking mass numbers people up in asylums, perhaps with little to no due process in the name of, or more actually “potentially” preventing mass shootings is not the answer to preventing mass shootings. That is unless you want to abandon all civil liberties in the name of safety.
To me it is little different from the proposed draconian and anti-2nd A gun laws being proposed.
“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” - Benjamin Franklin
Start with all the baby killing Communists in Versailles on the Potomac.
“imho a lot of mental illness can be mitigated by dietary changes — especially by knocking out all sugar. and replacing sugar calories with fat calories”
Hmmm, you sound like one of us. Care to join my Low Carb / Keto Ping List?
The “care” given to those people in institutions was worse than what they endure living on the streets. But yes, get them off the streets. Here in Michigan none live on the streets but they live in group homes and get good care.
Mostly you are correct. It’s a lot more than babysitting, but basically yes. Many are adults with metabolic disorders that kept them from mentally maturing, and shaken babies who are now adults. Also lots of autistic spectrum.
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