(10-05-2017, 08:36 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: It has now been nearly five years since a mentally ill young person killed several in a school shooting in Connecticut. At the time of the Newtown Massacre it was revealed that the sharp decline in mental health services during the past three decades left a void which figuratively could have prevented tragedies such as this one. As we know, between then and the massacre in Las Vegas a few days back, there have been many more mass shootings, very often perpetrated by someone who was obviously mentally imbalanced at the time of the act.
Years ago many of those unstable individuals were housed in facilities such as sanitariums, away from the general public usually. Many of them were inhumane, virtually one notch above prisons. Many if not most of the inmates pretty much had life sentences. But at least there was shelter from the rain, wind and snow and got, as the saying goes, three hots and a cot.
With mental problems often comes anorexia, something that a sanitarium might deal with effectively. I have noticed that several of the male shooters were anorexic... although anorexia seems not to lead to violence in women, it seems to be not only rare but it seems to be common among the shooters. Maybe there is something to the 'lean and hungry look' in Shakespeare's history Julius Caesar as Caesar says of one of his eventual assassins.
Quote:The balance we seek between the quest for greater personal freedom and others in society that may need protection can often be elusive even though it can also be found within ourselves, meaning that we have the ability to create positive outcomes by redirecting our energy to suit our own wellbeing. Apparently the sanitariums and similar places in the past failed at this.
Incarceration for mental illness can border on preventive detention. But there are people who cannot take care of themselves and need constant attention to keep them from hurting themselves or others.
Someone who talks about killing himself while in a hospital? In Michigan that is good for a three-day commitment, as I found out with my father at one time. I tried to get him to watch his mouth, but he was persistent. The hospital was going to protect itself from a lawsuit.
Quote:But now could be the time for a revival of sanitariums being that so many are being freaked out by the stresses of modern life, which I believe the information age and some our addictions to it have magnified. And I am sure there are many who find themselves unable to cope with the stresses of the cost of living and getting by today, with so many forced to live paycheck to paycheck or even more on a shoestring.
Most people in the mental health system are there for drugs or alcohol. But this is short term. Situational depression? I have been there, and for that talk therapy as an outpatient can work. For those of low intelligence we have sheltered workshops, places in which the mentally-retarded can make some pretense of a contribution to society while being protected from people who would abuse or exploit them. But mental impairment is not really mental illness. Mental retardation and mental illness are very different and people with one are appropriately kept from the other.
Many mental illnesses are treatable on an outpatient basis, and for the sake of cost to the public, let alone the dignity of the patient, are best done on an outpatient basis unless the mentally-ill person be dangerous. .
Quote:We need to hope that they will be more humane this time around, but such places at least can provide a communal living experience which is sorely lacking in modern life. Could what's old become new again?
As with many things a program to shelter the mentally ill may begin with good intentions and then go very bad. The sanitariums will begin as places almost attractive to those inquiring about sending a troublesome loved one. The staff hired at first will act as if it has a mission... but take heed. Mental patients in a residential setting are not nice people. Idealism wears off fast in such a place, and turnover leads to a mental ward (and the sanitarium becomes that) in which the staff who gravitate there either have no professionalism or become nasty. People start being sent there as a convenience, as to dump off a troublesome child -- or to sequester a political dissident (with an admirer of dictators as President, that could be a problem -- think of teh abuse of mental institutions in the old Soviet Union). It doesn't take long before budget cuts make a bad situation worse.
In time such stories as The Bell Jar and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest enter the mass consciousness.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.