Posted on 04/16/2018 4:32:44 AM PDT by Jim Noble
CONCORD — Mental health patients held in hospital emergency rooms awaiting involuntary admission to the state psychiatric hospital are still being denied due process, despite the fact that Health and Human Service officials said a program would be in place early this year to address the problem.
A 90-day pilot was launched late last year involving four hospitals in the hope that the effort could be expanded to all 26 hospitals in the state in 2018.
But the four hospitals — Catholic Medical Center in Manchester, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, Southern N.H. Medical Center in Nashua and Speare Memorial Hospital in Plymouth — decided their emergency rooms could not accommodate a judicial process...
The problem stems from a shortage of mental health beds at the state psychiatric hospital — New Hampshire Hospital in Concord — and at other “designated receiving facilities” for psychiatric patients in Manchester, Portsmouth and Franklin.
Those four locations are set up to conduct hearings in front of a judge in cases of involuntary emergency admissions. If people don’t think they need to be in mental health treatment, they have a right to a hearing...
But many mental health patients are being boarded in emergency rooms at hospitals that are not “designated receiving facilities.” Patients who protest their admission or want out of those emergency rooms can wait for weeks, even months, before they can get in front of a judge...
“I think the bigger point is that our country was built on protecting civil liberties, and while NAMI doesn’t want to see people who are in need of medical care released on a technicality, neither do we want to see wholesale discrimination against people’s civil liberties because of their mental illness.”...
There are a lot more crazy people now than there were in 1955. I don't know that the advocate's quote ("our country was built on protecting civil liberties") is exactly correct, but I do know that from 1788-1963 our country was committed to shelter people who were a danger to themselves or to others, and we no longer are.
Since our current mental health policies are premised on a Jack Nicholson movie and feelings, this is not likely to get better any time soon.
My dad brought up this topic from the late 1930s in Alabama, where all it took was one single letter signed by two relatives to a county judge....would trigger the sheriff deputies to come out and apprehend someone who was considered ‘unfit’, and the judge would ask five or six questions to validate the letter, then send the guy off to the state facility for nutcases. That was it.
The thing is....you didn’t have insane people walking around, and causing grief with people. Course, we might be shocked to realize that one-percent of society really needs to be housed in some type of facility.
There is a remarkable film out called “Alive Inside” which shows Nursing Homes and the residents, some who have been there ‘vegetating’ for ten years and more....educate your selves in the advent you either know someone or are close to putting a loved one in one of these homes. In many ways the film is up-lifting.
Important topic.
However, it’s not such a cut and dry matter of government screwing up.
Patient advocacy played a big role in exposing how badly mental institutes were mistreating patients, and made the argument that patients would better thrive in smaller group home settings.
Overwheling evidence of patient abuse and subsequent law suits led to deinstitutionalisation initiatives in CA 1967 signed into law under Governor Reagan. The rest of the country followed suit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation
Well, there is a limit to what can be done for someone using other people’s money.
Compare a Medicaid nursing home, for example, with a private one. Some states pay $70/day for 24-hour care of a Medicaid patient, a result of perfectly legitimate political processes in those states.
But, of course you can make an “exposé” for television of what $70/day will buy.
The fact that people don’t like what they see on some TV show should not result in taking more from taxpayers strained to the limit as it is.
And if the old NH Hospital buildings were not filled up with bureaucrats, perhaps there would be more money to care for the sick.
And all it took was a few high profIle ca ses of corrupt high sheriff’s and scheming patient relatives to lock away a “problem” person, and enrich themselves with the patient’s estate.
That happened in my state when they had a very powerful county government.
It’s complicated.
Have you ever had to provide 24-hour care for a violent, seriously mentally ill person on a budget?
I agree it looks like abuse.
It's also abuse to have them raping and strangling joggers in San Diego, or cutting the arms off of teenage girls after raping them.
You really have to make some choices about what you are willing to live with.
The status quo is not satisfactory.
Netflex has the film, Alive Inside....watch it, you'll see something remarkable you can do.
That wiki entry you link to was written by someone educated beyond their own actual understanding of the subject. It is propaganda of the worst sort and full of the type of garbage that those with family members with mental health problems need to speak out against. These type of “advocates” that pedal that kind of misinformation are con artists that endanger the members of the whole community.
Im aware of many similar situations that occurred in this area in the past also. Thats an entirely different set of crimes being committed and has nothing to do with supporting those with mental health problems. The pendulum has swung far too far in the opposite direction.
I bet Hillary could get to the front of that line.
It’s apparent how you “feel”.
However, it’s not clear what critical thinking you may have used to critique the author of this topic.
50 credible reference sources are apparently not rigorous for your research standards.
That’s crazy...
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