"we used to have mental hospitals"

[onethatcares]

but ronnie raygun decided they were too expensive and closed them releasing the patients to the streets.

funny how that part was left out.

[MichMary]

1. Involuntary commitment

was on the road to ending well before Reagan. And that was a good thing.

[janterry]

4. We warehoused generations of people in those places

I worked with one young man whose father was born in a mental hospital. The father told me he was paroled when he was 18. I said, no, Name Withheld, they discharged you, not paroled you (he didn't do anything wrong, btw, just had a low IQ - ). After he left the hospital, he worked and supported his family for thirty years --when I got involved, it was to help his son (his wife had just died and the son was not doing well).

Anyway, I requested his old paperwork and on it was written: paroled. Oh, and his formal diagnosis: imbecile.

[cbdo2007]

10. They still do this, especially in FL

Thousands of people each year are involuntarily committed to a mental hospital for a minimum of 1 night at the discretion of the police. I work at a health insurance company and tracked these cases recently as part of a project. It's called the "Baker Act" which allows the police to send anybody they want to an overnight stay at a mental health facility that the person must pay for.

[Leghorn21]

2. Why, yes. Yes we did, asshole. There will be a HUGE reaction to this massive dumbfuck's

remarks, one...but yeah, to listen to him actually say that...out loud...

yeah, I got no comment

Oy

[procon]

3. One of Reagan's egregiously shortsighted decisions that cost us far more than

the mental hospitals. When he closed the hospitals and turned out all the patents, WTF did he think was going to happen? The police aren't psychiatrists and prisons are not in the business of treating people with serious mental health problems, and bullets are not like prescriptions.

[Caliman73]

12. It wasn't just Reagan.

There was a movement to get people out of congregate settings. They were not good places, rife with abuse, and showing not positive outcomes. There were patient's rights groups, families, and professionals who were all working toward the closure of those places. Communities had set up treatment clinics, housing programs, work programs, and other treatment modalities that would have provided much more benefit to the people rotting away in hospitals, at less cost to taxpayers. Where Reagan should get the blame is for promising funding to follow the people back in to their communities, and not fulfilling that promise.

[silverweb]

5. Patients were supposed to be moved into group homes.

I remember well when this happened. There were two mental hospitals I knew of, one in NY and one in NJ, that had horrible reputations. I was very happy they were going to be closed, especially since patients were going to be moved into group homes.

We were sold a bill of goods when they said patients would be in staffed, "home-like settings," still getting their meds and whatever therapy they were supposed to be getting. Instead, patients were simply booted out of the hospitals and left to fend for themselves.

[janterry]

6. Some states, ime, did a good job

or at least an okay one. In MA the group homes were pretty good (and well staffed). The ones I saw in FL were terrible or nonexistent. The difference in MA (again, in the homes I worked with) was that there was a cost share with the state DMH. In FL, no such cost share existed. As a result, the group homes were Mom and Pop shops (someone without any experience just sort of collected the SSI checks and housed them........for better.......or worse........

But, yeah, it was a mixed bag and could be pretty terrible. OTOH, the back wards of those hospitals were pretty terrible (as I'm sure you know).

We can't go back to warehousing people. It was abusive.

oh, and LOL Trump wants to restart expensive psychiatric hospitals. Um, who is going to foot that bill???

[silverweb]

7. Agreed on every point.

Those hospitals were terrible. Some states followed through with care for the patients released, others didn't, but warehousing people is something we don't want to go back to.

The fact is, though, that we're still warehousing many of them, but in prisons, and taxpayers are footing that bill already. More well-regulated group homes for patients who will benefit would make a lot more sense than more hospitals.

[janterry]

8. Group homes can be really lovely

when managed and funded appropriately.

I've worked in the prisons, too.....so - we agree on all of this

[silverweb]

9. Indeed we do.

[Caliman73]

11. It wasn't the closing of the hospitals that was the bad thing.

Congregate settings for mentally ill or developmentally disabled people have always been the worst type of care. The problem with Reagan's actions was that the funding that was supposed to follow the people back into their communities never materialized. Community Mental Health treatment has ALWAYS been a better model of care but if you do not fund it properly, then you get the mess that we have in the United States.

Trump is an idiot who has no understanding of anything, which is why he appeals to his ignorant base who have the same mentality of "locking people away" without any plan or process for integrating people into society.

The problem is not psychiatric disability. The problem is that people are incredibly stressed, isolated, angry, have easy access to weapons, and the idea of violence as a means to resolve problems is sanctioned in this country.