Why would you think that someone who feels that bad is in a condition to give informed consent about having her picture taken?
-Every time that I'm at the crisis unit at the Solomon Carter Fuller building, it's dilapidated, and I'm frequently too abused by staff and patients to stay there.
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That's a picture of part of the Boston Globe's article from December 11, 2016. The article is about San Antonio, Texas.
The two categories described by Mr. Lozito say more than the people who reported them probably realize. "Who are we mad at" is something that a lot of people don't think about when they're talking about people whom they're calling mentally ill. I know that the distinction he was talking about is between people who get arrested who are dangerous and people who get arrested who have done things that are disruptive and whose lives aren't getting anywhere but who are not necessarily dangerous. However, "Who we're mad at" is also something that can be applied to the question of how society thinks about mental illness and how often the people who have the anger management problems are treated as if they're sane while their targets are diagnosed. Have I read something from the Boston Globe's articles about mental illness that talks about people being abused until they're mentally ill, and then being abused for being mentally ill, because I don't think that I have. You don't have to be crazy to want to kill yourself or to have other types of problems.
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That's another picture of part of the article.
Why do you think it is that people leaving hospitals are traumatized and don't want to take medication? How many times have I written about what most psychiatric facilities are like, how medication makes people feel and what it does to their bodies?
Are you going to write anything about prejudice and stigma toward the mentally ill, and how those things eliminate the possibility of recovery for a lot of people?
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Did the case manager have a problem with the job that this woman already had?
Now the woman has to spend the rest of her career and her life defined by mental health in one way or another?
What's not being said is the way that so much of the mental health care system is about telling people what to do; when you agree with what they think about you, then they're nicer to you and you can get the support they have to offer. Until you tell them what they want to hear about their assessments of you, they label you as being difficult to work with or as not being insightful about your own life. A personality clash with someone who's supposed to help you can ruin your life, or turn you into someone who does to other people what was done to you.
At least, that's what it's like for poor people most of the time, or for people whose mental health care bills are being paid for by the people who emotionally or physically abuse them.
This is another woman whom the article mentions:
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Really? She'd "understand if they had to shoot her son one day."
Sarcasm Alert:
That's so NICE of her. I don't know how anyone might think that her son's mental problems are her fault.
End of Sarcasm Alert
-It wouldn't be a Boston Globe article about mental illness if there weren't several terrifying descriptions of murders and suicides, to help remind everyone to be afraid of anyone who has a diagnosis.
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Do you think that bullying at school and online might have something to do with emotionally distressed teenagers and young adults?
LAW ENFORCEMENT DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO "INSTANTLY" ACCESS PEOPLE'S MEDICAL RECORDS!
Law enforcement has the responsibility to assess each situation individually, rather than to punch a person's name into a database and decide that his or her psychiatric history is the answer to every question that would otherwise be asked about an incident for which the police were called.
Don't think that there aren't police officers who would do that, and don't think that nobody who knew that someone had a psychiatric history would ever harass or otherwise abuse someone, knowing that the victim's history will be accessed by the police and that the abuser and a police officer called by the victim will be laughing together before the victim gets hauled to the mental hospital. That happens all the time without a database; it's happened to people for centuries.
-I have read the article, and I have this to say:
Yet again, the words "prejudice" and "stigma" are nowhere in this article.
The training of police officers and the tangible supports that are about real resources and not about forcing people into treatment are what are helping at-risk people the most. It's a mistake to think that medication, involuntarily administered or not, is what's helping the most; a mistake that has a lot of consequences for people's rights.
Do I think that temporary, involuntary admissions to hospitals and even temporary, involuntary medication are never the appropriate things to do? No; I have seen people who need intervention and it's awful to see them not get it day after day and even year after year. However, even in homeless shelters, the people who are like that are not even 10 of 100.
Other than the criticisms that I have mentioned, this article's much improved over the others that I have read. I'm glad that the Boston Globe has started to think holistically about the issue.
That's the address for it.
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, December 13, 2016 @ 4:53 p.m.
