Posted on 08/21/2008 7:59:15 AM PDT by Chickensoup
You keep on going. What they did is their problem and not yours. Someday they’ll come to you and you should rub it in their noses but good.
As for you. Keep up the fight and be the best you can be.
We all can learn from you.
>>But, is locking these people up the way to go?<<
Yes, it is.
If they are a danger to themselves or society, it is.
The idea of personal freedom for someone who is looking to suicide, kill or hurt others, is dangerous. The experiment has failed. Now is the time to return to “mental insitutions” but with better treatment.
And try to get someone on a Haldol or Prolixin depo to understand that the Friday night of fun, drinking with pals on the 7th, will cut the effectiveness of their med on the 30th. Those delusions are very real.
We had one like that.
That's okay. You can think I am wrong. I'm not going to vilify you but I don't agree with you.
I see no problem with a family paying to institutionalize their family member. No reason for the state to take on the burden. We care for our seniors, why not care for those who are ill.
Yes, it is a BURDEN. In the “old days” it stayed in the family. Your reasoning is why the “state” is dumped on. Yes, we neglect our sane senior citizens for the same reasons - it's inconvenient. We've quilted the old folks into believing they are a burden because they are old. When folks are old they actually want more familiarity and around those that genuinely care for them - not paid strangers and hope they are not abused.
The problem is that because the system is the way it is, there are NOT institutions to put them into. We fought to find one young man a group home to go into. Weeks and week while he ended up hospitalized for suicide attempts over and over (one was a Drano consumption that did damage that could not be undone). There was no where to put him.
You see, I just don't agree with more warehousing of the troubled or older folks. You accept this as the solution. I don't.
Understand, there were five children in this family. All grown and all taking care of him in shifts. They still couldn’t overcome his desire to punish himself for his imaginary transgressions.
So the “state” will do a better job?
LOL!
The “state” only makes things worse. They'll just speed up his demise in a sadistic way.
Nmh, you’re yearning for a society that never existed. Mad houses have been around since at least the Middle Ages...not exactly the Age of Convenience, back then.
Yes, families should take care of their own...but full-blown mental illness can literally destroy the most solid family unit, if only by stabbing everyone while they sleep.
A young woman I knew managed to kill herself while under suicide watch in a hospital with a nurse right outside the door and a doctor right down the hall...it only takes a moment for the illness to manifest.
Lots of frustration around this tangled issue...gal I know worked as a respiratory tech in one of those old mental institutions, said it was pretty depressing; they were so short-staffed they had pump the patients full of Thorazine to stop them from killing each other long enough to feed them.
Letting ‘em out on the streets, on the other hand, obviously has its downsides, which we see in the news and on our streetcorners everyday.
No easy answers.
Personally, I apply the Golden Rule thusly: I’d like to be left on my own unless such a time came as I became a danger to others...then, most reluctantly, I’d prefer to have the state lock me up than to learn I’d involuntarily hurt someone I loved, or a stranger.
Same as if I had an infectious disease, like TB...I wouldn’t WANT to wander the streets, making others miserable...even unwittingly.
Yes, it’s a burden on state budgets, but I think it’s squarely within government’s limited, necessary functions.
What about treatment?? And, who will be “the decider” of who is not “right”. Very, very slippery slope.
If freepers want to know how in the old days families took care of elderly parents or disabled family members, first parents had big families, and usually one of the daughters will be the designee to care for the imfirmed family member. She usually will not get a chance to marry and die a spinster. In today’s feminist and civil libertarian attitude of me first and my aspirations first, and why me (because I am a girl and its not fair) stuck with this sh#t detail, you better have good long term care insurance.
My guess is big money donations for the "homeless" are drying up. So liberals need job security - with benefits - so it's up to the "state" to take care of the problem. ( The "problem" being unemployed liberals.)
Conservatives usually back off on these issues mistakenly believing dems are the "caring" ones. But just like with welfare reform - where we spotted the perverse incentives, conservatives should craft the debate on this subject.
>>Yes, it is a BURDEN. In the “old days” it stayed in the family.<<
Okay, let’s go this way.
Can you give a reference to this fact?
Because “Insane Asylums” were actually the norm, my FRiend.
>>And, who will be “the decider” of who is not “right”.<<
There is a diagnostic book called the DSM. I think it is up to the “DSM-V” these days.
That book decides. One looks at a patient’s symptoms and the book guides you throught to a diagnosis. Certain diagnosis are “committed”. Plain and simple.
When you have a group home next door to you and people yelling at your kids and urinating in your driveway, then come and talk to me about the “very slippery slope”. We are at the bottom right now. Patients who need constant care are set adrift in the world because they have no where to go. Group homes are great if you can find them but institutions protect the patient who doesn’t want to take meds and the society who is put in danger by them.
I worked too long in Psych to listen to the “rights of the patient” argument. That hasn’t worked in the last 20 years.
Taking care of a seriously mentally ill people isn't like taking care of an aged parent who has lost their mental faculties. The aged parent, though difficult to take care of, is not likely to be dangerous (except maybe inadvertenly). But an adult paranoid schizophrenic, for example, can be a very dangerous person. It's unrealistic to expect a regular family (especially one with children in the house) to let such a dangerous person live with them.
You're assuming that families don't want to take care of mentally ill people because it's too much of a hassle, but in many cases it comes down to a safety issue.
I wonder though- given how much we have to pay for police, medical services and prisons to deal with the damage done by, and to, untreated mentally ill people, would it really cost more to pay for institutional care for such people? The startup costs might be high, if we had to build and staff the hospitals, but it wouldn't surprise me if we saw cost-savings in the long run.
insane or troubled people are not something that a typical person wants to be burdened with ... it interrupts their life and is an inconvenience
It is easy to say that it is a burden or an inconvenience when you are not faced with the mountain of coping with a psychotic inviduual
If you try to force them on their family, there won’t be any family to force them on to. Even the strongest of families can only take so much. They force out the insane member because it is either “them or us”, literally a life or death problem. This is not some casual “lifestyle choice.”
What would you have them do? Chain them up, or kill them?
Call up the police and have them chain them up, or kill them?
Even Bedlam hospital, whose name is still synonymous with the cruel treatment of the insane, and one of the first mental hospitals of Europe, was created because neither family nor society could deal with the insane in any other way than killing them.
Sorry, “one word solutions” don’t work, unless that word is “kill”.
“Sorry, “one word solutions” don’t work, unless that word is “kill”.”
I’m sorry to see that family is not a consideration.
I also don’t agree with your extreme rejection of family.
“You’re assuming that families don’t want to take care of mentally ill people because it’s too much of a hassle, but in many cases it comes down to a safety issue.”
In the majority of situations that is TRUE a burden that interrupts their normal lives.
Let’s atleast be honest about that fact.
The people you see on the street aren't people who have occasional issues with depression or mild forms of bi-polar disease.
They're people with serious mental illnesses, many of whom have a substance abuse problem, who can be very dangerous to their families. These families have had to make the difficult choice between trying to help the mentally ill person, or ensuring the safety of other family members. I'd hate to be in a position where I'd have to kick out an uncle or a sibling to protect my kids, but I can't blame people for doing so- unless you're talking about a rich family that can afford full-time, professional care for a dangerous mentally-ill relative, what choice do they have?
Didn't grandpa Kennedy lobotomize his daughter because she was an embarassment? A state institution would have been better.
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