The Free Zone Board

[pat34lee]

Re: Meme - On Mental Health

< You can make up stuff in your head, you can even attribute one little incident in NYC to the liberals if you need to, but nobody can deny the eye-witness testimony of America.

If you were a conscious adult in the early 80's, the swelling ranks of the homeless could hardly pass unnoticed. Nor could one help, but notice their mental problems. >

Noone denies that there are many homeless with mental disorders, or that many mentally ill are in jail. The problem is not in a lack of facilities for them though, but the inability of authorities or family to legally force treatment on unwilling patients.


http://www.schizophrenia.com/newsletter/898/898manhard.htm

My understanding is that prior to the last 30 years, families had the practical ability in many states to intervene to help a mentally ill loved one be involuntarily committed and treated. In those states "loved ones" who wanted to get their mentally ill family member into treatment could so with comparative ease. There were indeed some rare cases where families either committing a loved one without good cause or the ill were left in a hospital far longer than was warranted. And many institutions undoubtedly lacked thorough screening procedures to ensure that those "candidates" for hospitalization and treatment unquestionably needed it.

Right of families to easily commit was replaced by "right to refuse? Thus the climate was ripe for change and major efforts to remedy the injustices that had been imposed on a sizable segment of the mentally ill in to many states. State by state, the ACLU and mental health bar(right wingers?) engineered & succeeded in getting legislatures to pass laws which took away the traditional ability of families to commit their seriously mentally ill loved ones who needed treatment and substituted the right of the patient "not to be treated" unless they were a danger to themselves or gravely disabled.

The passing of present laws to preserve the "rights" of a mentally ill person "lacking capacity" to understand that they have a serious mental illness have helped produce "unintended harmful consequences" causing them unwarranted suffering. Civil libertarians would like to ignore these, but here are some of those "unintended consequences". . . . . . . . .

1. Violence both by the some of the untreated mentally ill and to them. The incidences of violence would not be nearly as prevalent among the mentally ill if the law weren't obstructing path to getting them treated.

2. Several 1000's of needless suicides annually by untreated mentally ill.

3. Homelessness for a conservatively estimated 125,000 mentally ill -- a great many of whom, if treated, would not otherwise be homeless.

4. Needless incarceration of 10's of thousands of the untreated mentally ill who we have been shamelessly jailed rather than treated . . .

5. Unnecessarily causing the untreated mentally ill persons to remain locked in their illness and unable to realize their life's full potential.

6. The present law has been a major detriment to the relief of the frustration and agony experienced daily by hundreds of thousands of family members who have been unable to get their mentally ill loved ones to treatment. . . . The 27-10 Statute simply contains no standard to allow commitment for those who are not dangerous but are severly mentally ill & lack insight regarding their illness.

Each of these above consequences of our failing to make treatment for all of the seriously mentally ill a priority is a tragedy in and of itself. But collectively these consequences involve a magnitude of harm & misery which should evoke loud and persistent demands by civil libertarians and the media that those problems be eliminated. Instead, many turn their heads and pretend that these problems don't exist.