Bring Back The Asylums?

[Gregb]

With all the mass shootings one has to wonder what in the world we are doing with our mental health services. Mental health hits me hard personally. I have a family member who suffers greatly and does not get the help needed.

 

The question begs, is it time to bring back the asylums? Better than them getting hurt and being homeless.

 

The tragic consequences of deinstitutionalization.

http://www.currentpsychiatry.com/the-publication/past-issue-single-view/bring-back-the-asylums/20064951b8caf413d494a0eb19b67cf8.html

[Buffy]

There is not just a need for more services, there has to be both a change in access to those services and a change in attitude about mental health problems.

 

Elliot Rodger's parents apparently tried to get him committed, had facilities, and then the insurance company denied the claim.

 

Easy to point fingers all around, but this one is absolutely critical, as a significant number of mass/spree killers are suffering from some sort of mental illness.

 

A good article on America's health care crisis in the Guardian:

 

In the last several years, national tragedies like the shootings in Newtown have put pressure on the US government to improve access to mental health treatment. This weekend's violence in Santa Barbara has reignited the issue. But behind these headline-grabbing mass killings is a much broader crisis.

 

The most publicised reform came in November 2013 when the Obama administration issued regulations directing all private American insurance plans to cover mental health care in the same way as other medical care. These regulations mean, among other things, that co-payments and caps for mental health-related treatment cannot be more expensive or restrictive than for any other type of medical care.

 

There’s just one problem: while Obama may have expanded access to mental health benefits, the reach of the services those benefits theoretically provide hasn’t kept up. The availability of mental health care in the US remains woefully inadequate to handle current demand, never mind a potential influx of new patients.

 

Source: "America's mental health care crisis: families left to fill the void of a broken system" Ruth Spencer, The Guardian, 5/27/2014

 

 

Tragedy is the difference between what is and what could have been, :phones:

Buffy

[Gregb]

There is not just a need for more services, there has to be both a change in access to those services and a change in attitude about mental health problems.

 

Elliot Rodger's parents apparently tried to get him committed, had facilities, and then the insurance company denied the claim.

 

Well, my family member is essentially on a death spiral and mental health services can't do anything. Insurance does play a big part I agree. He is in and out of hospitals. He needs long term care or basically we are waiting for a phone call to tell us he is dead.

[sanctus]

Just shows me again that in the US you really have a problem with the whole care system...and when someone tries to improve it, the do-it-yourself or self-made-man attitude jumps in with the result leaving everyone unhappy...

[Gregb]

I think we need to pass this bill ASAP

 

Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act

http://murphy.house.gov/helpingfamiliesinmentalhealthcrisisact

[arissa]

I like where Buffy is going with this. Having an older sibling with mental issues I know how hard it can be for the person with the problems as well as the family side of it too. Not everyone is a do-it-yourself type either, many will self-medicate but others still go ignored too.

[Racoon]

Sorry, but this guy had not 1, but 2 Therapists.. He had very active and expensive care.

 

But Guess what?? Some people are simply beyond help. There is around 5% of the population that are born Sociopathic/Psychotic and no amount of "Help" is going to help.

Some people are just "evil" and it doesn't matter what you do, or say, or try.

 

The Media wants to manipulate this incident for the Gun Control debate, but if it wasn't for Police who were quickly on the scene with their guns, then this guy could have killed many more... He killed 3 people with a hammer and machete, and ran over a guy on a bike.

 

Where's the concept of Personal Responsibility anymore? Who can anyone really blame for this?? - The cops followed the law when alerted. They couldn't violate someones civil rights despite some "Tip" that they should do something. Or you open up the possibility of people calling the cops on people they don't like...

 

The parents and this A-hole himself are the ones to Blame.. There is No finger to point.

Is the Media saying what Drugs he was on?? of course not, but you can bet your bottom dollar he was on some type of Meds.. all these similar-type killers are.

 

This has Nothing to do with Gun Control. Its Guns that let people defend themselves from people or governments who wish to do you harm. California has some of the Strictest Gun Control laws in place.. Do you think Gangbangers and Mexican mafia are going to turn in their guns??

 

The Media is dropping/ will drop this story as soon as they can because it doesn't fit their Liberal narrative.

 

This guy was just some sicko nut, who was beyond help or repair. In another time he'd be some punk-*** Prince or Baron who layed waste to villages on a whim or rebuke.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Racoon

[Racoon]

Despite this singular case, there is however a dire need to revisit the funding and availability of Mental Health Care.

 

Unfortunately, Mental Health is the first to get cut during Budget Cuts. Just ask the original Governor Brown of California who began the shut down of Psych Hospitals...

http://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html

 

Maybe instead of Obama giving the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt Billions of dollars, (just one example) We could use that money to help fund mental health institutions here in the U.S.

[Elisa]

Something drastic does have to be done. I have a person in my life who is not well and she has numerous restraining orders against her by family members. She sees 2 psychologists and is very well versed in how there is "nothing wrong with her" (it happens to be everyone else, btw). Bottom line is that nothing can be done for her until she does something violent to herself or someone else. It makes me very, very sad.

[smalfry]

I don't think that we need to reopen any mental asylums. There was far too much abuse and neglect in these establishments. I do think that we need to take a look at our healthcare. I work at a hospital. Our hospital just closed the psychiatriac units (adult and adolescent). The reason being was that they were not money-makers. Each month the two units were costing the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars. I live in New York state. I blame the state for this problem.

[Gregb]

Our hospital just closed the psychiatriac units (adult and adolescent). The reason being was that they were not money-makers. Each month the two units were costing the hospital hundreds of thousands of dollars. I live in New York state. I blame the state for this problem.

That is tragic. So wrong. These people have no future without treatment.

[CraigD]

Just shows me again that in the US you really have a problem with the whole care system...and when someone tries to improve it, the do-it-yourself or self-made-man attitude jumps in with the result leaving everyone unhappy...

I believe we in the US healthcare field do have a systemic problem, and are inferior in this area to most countries with comprehensive “single payer” national healthcare systems.

 

While blaming a “do-it-yourself or self-made-man attitude” is not inaccurate, I think it’s too simplistic, and ignores the long history of US public mental healthcare policy. Perhaps the most important observation one can make from that history is that the system was not always as troubled, but rather, began to be in the late 1950s, due to a number of factors, the most obvious a shift from public in-patient mental health facilities – “asylums”, in other words – to private, mostly out-patient facilities – “halfway houses”.

 

It’s fashionable, and in my opinion not entirely inaccurate, to blame former California governor and US president Ronald Reagan for this change. More accurately, I blame a collection of attitudes and political movements including

• right wing ones that resulted in Regan’s political success,
• combined with left wing ideas intended to address abuses in the public mental health systems of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s,
• aided by progress in psychopharmacology that made it technically possible to release profoundly mentally ill people by treating them with increasingly more effective drugs.

It’s certainly unfashionable, but IMO not entirely inaccurate, to blame radical hippie Ken Kesey, author of the much acclaimed (and once much banned) 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest – though IMO Kesey and the attitudes and politics he embodied deserve a far smaller share of the blame than those embodied by Regan.

 

This 1998 sociology journal article and this 2013 Salon.com article are among many supporting my view.

 

History aids in understanding, but more important is what to do to improve mental health care. I’m optimistic that we in the US are entering an opportune time for such improvements. The main drivers behind this opportunity are the continuing – and, I suspect, likely unending unless major changes are made - series of mass murders by psychologically troubled US citizens, and the de-mobilization of the US military in the wake of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, with its attendant possibility of “peace dividend” spending on US domestic programs.

 

It’s fashionable to say “you can’t just throw money” at a problem, but in my opinion and experience, throwing money with behind a sensible, scientifically supported plan can be very effective. I believe that a very large ($10,000,000,000+/year – by comparison, Medicare is about $200,000,000,000/year, while the Afghanistan war from 2001 to 2011 averaged about $47,000,000,000/year) US federal and state program to reverse the move from public in-patient facilities to private out-patient ones started around 1960, with sound legal oversight to assure that the abuses reformers sought to overturn then – essentially unjustified involuntary commitments – are prevented, could fix the problem as much as it can be fixed, and make the US’s system the equal or better of any nation’s. In short yes, bring back the asylums

 

I think it’s important to stress that while in-patient mental health care will sometimes necessarily be long term – some patients are so profoundly mentally ill that they must be closely supervised for their entire lives – most of it need not be. I’ve known, personally and professionally, many people who have benefitted greatly from in-patient stays of 30 to 100 days, in some cases only one such stays in their lifetime. Two friends of mine who were denied IMO badly needed and desired in-patient treatment, murdered people, one of them also a friend. I miss them all – the dead friend, and the two who have spent decades in their non-psychiatric prisons, and will most likely die there.

 

Helping Families In Mental Health Crisis Act

http://murphy.house.gov/helpingfamiliesinmentalhealthcrisisact

I support this bill, and the Mentally Ill Offender Treatment and Crime Reduction Act of 2004 it would reinstate, but believe they are much too little funded (<$10,000,000/year) and insufficiently focused on in-patient vs. out-patient treatment.