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They used to keep them in hospitals, remember? Till Mr. Reagan decided they could get out and just take medication and all would be fine. I was working in Manhattan on the 1980s. The increase in mentally ill homeless was immediately noticeable.
As I recall, I think Reagan commented that churches and charities could step in and take care of things. That it wasn't the govt's responsibility.
The increase of mentally ill people wandering our streets is a national problem we've ignored. These people are sick. Why are we not taking care of them? I'm not the least bit surprised to hear of these snap murders.
There are lot of mentally ill people running around. The nation has done a poor job addressing mental health.
Exactly correct. The nation has neglected to deal with an issue that has been lurking among us for years. When are we going to make it a priority instead of paying lip service. After every killing most people rush to give condolences and then ease back into the woodwork.
The increase of mentally ill people wandering our streets is a national problem we've ignored. These people are sick. Why are we not taking care of them? I'm not the least bit surprised to hear of these snap murders.
Ask the ACLU the sued to let them out on the streets in the 80's. It costs min 25k to warehouse one in jail over 100k to "treat them right" and many are junkies that aren't motivated to change.
Who has an extra 100k to treat just one right? Food, shelter, detox, psych, psychologists, their salaries and benefits.............
The increase of mentally ill people wandering our streets is a national problem we've ignored. These people are sick. Why are we not taking care of them? I'm not the least bit surprised to hear of these snap murders.
They do get treatment, haven't you seen the statistics of people on meds? If these people stop taking their meds then this can happen.
Guess NYC will be calling for a ban on box cutters now. They won't blame the mentally deranged person, they'll blame the tool he used.
Upstate NY isn't exactly the same as NYC. NYC people know to be on the lookout at all times, at least a lot more than upstate folks. Sure if you're preoccupied you can't see this coming, but if a guy is acting strange around you, in NYC, you're going to pay attention real fast. Too many things have happened not to care.
Well this is a new one to try and be prepared for...sad story.
I've purposely moved and repositioned myself on public transportation due to weird apparently mentally ill people and I've avoided people in a store due to strange behavior...
I'm thinking in the produce aisle a pineapple is my best defense - the best ending to this story would be someone bashing his head in with a can of cream corn (never cared for creamed corn) Steven Segal style.
While many mentally ill people need help and can be helped in various ways (medication et al), at some point the expenses and resources necessary to make them regular functioning productive members of society is a negatively leveraged equation (see teckee's comment). You'd be better off spending that money on the front end of problems as much as conceivably possible: prenatal education for mothers, early childhood care, intervention social service ombudsmen type programs for school age problems, medicated ankle bracelet type geo restrictions etc...
I know it sounds cold, but this is another issue political types can't seem to find intestinal fortitude to admit that, yes, there are some outliers among us and they are dangerous and we would all be better off if they are put down. The problem with these types is even though others noticed the instability, no one likely will document it and the various agencies will not intervene until it is too late i.e. the person has caused irreparable harm to others. And many times the people they harm are those trying to help them.
Using the government's logic of pre-emptive wars I feel the political types will use these incidents against the peoples best interests if they ever get the gumption to do anything, and instead want to qualify people who disagree with them as the 'enemy' versus the truly unstable. They love stories like this to create and foment programs and administrative bureaucracies to 'deal' with it. Sort of like they did with 'terror' issue.
We know where the majority of the incidents derive from, but they in their PC world will not address it nor secure the border, but rather, blame the people for not being accepting enough of whoever, whatever the danger is. Michael Chertoff (former head of TSA) made millions selling scanner technology to airports and creating a huge unionized government bureaucracy reminiscent of soviet Russia. At its most basic, its never about resolving a problem it is about how can (they) make money off of it. There is so much bass-ackwardness on the mental health issues.
Not an easy solution. Then there is always the George Carlin approach of using the four rectangular states to build large fenced in areas for the outliers (destructive elements) of humanity.
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