Is it time to bring back Insane Asylums? (drug, health care, regime)
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Not if you're going to call them Insane Asylums and use the same archaic methods that were used on people when we had such things.
Do you know how Geraldo Rivera (full disclosure: his real name is Gerald and his mother was Russian) got famous? He did a television expose on a facility on Staten Island called Willowbrook. He exposed extreme abuse and neglect of the "inmates" who were there because of "intellectual disabilities." That kind of thing freaks people out and the fact that there were many Willowbrooks back in the day gave psychiatric hospitals a bad name.
In-patient treatment can be very helpful to people with incurable disabilities. But it takes a lot of money that the public seems unwilling to contribute. Finally, thanks to Eddyline for pointing out that it was the Reagan Administration that halted much of the help that was formerly available to people with long-term mental issues, which accounts for a good portion of our homeless people, as well as the kind of schizophrenics who do mass murders.
I worked in NY with mental health consumers. We were required to watch that Willowbrook film for employment, and once a year afterward during employment. Never again. It was disgraceful. You would not want to treat a dog like that. We saw the FULL version of that video, not what the public sees.
I worked with people who were children at Willowbrook. It left scars on them for decades. No, we do not want to go back to those days.
Should we take away the rights of a majority because there are a few dangerous people with mental illnesses?
If 'yes'
What should we do with humanity as a whole? Since there's also a portion of the healthy population who happen to be dangerous, should we just lock everyone up, just in case? Keep every human from contacting another person to prevent anyone from hurting others?
I worked in NY with mental health consumers. We were required to watch that Willowbrook film for employment, and once a year afterward during employment. Never again. It was disgraceful. You would not want to treat a dog like that. We saw the FULL version of that video, not what the public sees.
I worked with people who were children at Willowbrook. It left scars on them for decades. No, we do not want to go back to those days.
"Insane Asylums"? You are right, we do not want to go back to those days, not for the mentally ill and not for people like my son with developmental disabilities.
Also, I wondered if the OP was describing not a mother and son but if he wasn't a "consumer" and not mentally ill at all. It would be hard to tell without having seen them. The care the people get is bad enough on the "outside" but worse on the "inside".
Personally, I don't think the people that do most of these horrible killings are mentally ill, I think they are evil to the core.
Most of the care, but not all, is done in outpatient settings. I do think a lot of these people that do the shootings are so scarey to others that they afraid to try to intervene. Also, most of the time there were signs or threats that no one addressed, probably again because of fear although a lot of the time, parents, friends and teachers don't want to believe the person would do that.
There needs to be more training and procedures for dealing with these problems before it happens. I am always so annoyed to learn that the killers were threatening or posting their plans on the internet after the fact.
It is also unfortunate when it comes to students in K-12 that the schools were all combined into these mega-schools where people don't know one another, parents don't know other parents, etc. That to me caused just too much of a disconnect among large numbers of people.
No easy answers but trying to put people away for good is definitely something that needs to be handled carefully. There were cases in the past where people that didn't have anywhere else to go landed in the insane asylums.
Involuntary incarceration is a far fetched notion in a society that has a past like ours with regard to the mentally ill. The pendulum swung a ways in favoring the outpatient mode of treatment until the funding was cut, and then the mentally ill were left to their own devices, wandering the cities lost in their own world of delusionary thoughts. The kind of antisocial behavior typical of the shooter mentality seems to stem from a type of personality disorder that hardly suggests those suffering it would be a public threat. Most are big talkers---But then again...
The shooters seem to be in a class by themselves and I guess we'd all be better off by advocating for their early detection and treatment, not an easy thing to do, but family members must be the first line of defense for these folks before they rain ruin on themselves, their family, or society. Did the Oregon shooter display signs of aggression, hatred, or unhinged thinking? We don't know, but his mother sure did and that would have saved a bunch of lives had she been able to know the severity of her son's mental state and had the ability to have him committed. We need to have a caring, safe haven for those who have demonstrated a lacking in their mental state...
"Insane Asylums"? You are right, we do not want to go back to those days, not for the mentally ill and not for people like my son with developmental disabilities.
Also, I wondered if the OP was describing not a mother and son but if he wasn't a "consumer" and not mentally ill at all. It would be hard to tell without having seen them. The care the people get is bad enough on the "outside" but worse on the "inside".
Personally, I don't think the people that do most of these horrible killings are mentally ill, I think they are evil to the core.
Most of the care, but not all, is done in outpatient settings. I do think a lot of these people that do the shootings are so scarey to others that they afraid to try to intervene. Also, most of the time there were signs or threats that no one addressed, probably again because of fear although a lot of the time, parents, friends and teachers don't want to believe the person would do that.
There needs to be more training and procedures for dealing with these problems before it happens. I am always so annoyed to learn that the killers were threatening or posting their plans on the internet after the fact.
It is also unfortunate when it comes to students in K-12 that the schools were all combined into these mega-schools where people don't know one another, parents don't know other parents, etc. That to me caused just too much of a disconnect among large numbers of people.
No easy answers but trying to put people away for good is definitely something that needs to be handled carefully. There were cases in the past where people that didn't have anywhere else to go landed in the insane asylums.
I agree with you. I have worked with the mentally impaired who could get very violent. The difference was that they did not have the mental capacity to plan and plot a violent incident in the future. For them, the truly violently mentally ill, it was all spontaneous unlike these serial killers. They did not know what they were doing, and the repercussions of their actions. These mass serial shooters DO know what the repercussions of their actions are. If not, why do they commit suicide before capture? A truly violently mentally ill person could not extrapolate that far into the future.
Of course, they too have mental heath issues, but it is not the same.
Certain types of mental disorders (I have read) like sociopaths, narcissists, borderline personality disorders, etc are almost impossible to get the people to go for treatment because they think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way they act. They never get help, just torture the family and people that have to deal with them.
Personally I think the common thread with these shooters is the Internet. They are all isolated in their homes, which the Internet makes very easy to do. They seek out other unstable people discussing disturbing issues on the Internet. It all feeds into their disordered existence.
It seems odd to me that we all have been concentrating on the seemingly unsolveable debate on gun control, while ignoring the other half of the equation: the mentally ill who are not confined away from the rest of the population.
Of course the issue would be who determines at what point someone can be considered "insane" enough to be placed in an asylum.
There are already laws that force people into mental wards/institutions if they're violent. If they comply with treatment they're released. So this argument is kind of a non-starter.
Mentally deranged mass shooters typically don't show any violent behaviour until they go on their spree. If they're not violent, if they're living a quiet life, and don't disturb anyone else, then there's no reason to be suspicious of them and lock them away.
Many killers give no obvious signs that there's anything to fear at all--the neighbours and acquaintances typically describe the killers as odd or eccentric or as loners. Those aren't really sufficient justification for pulling someone off the street, then locking them up and throwing away the key.
As you said, if the country did that with every oddball character out there, then it would be very very expensive to lock up all those eccentrics for life.
Certain types of mental disorders (I have read) like sociopaths, narcissists, borderline personality disorders, etc are almost impossible to get the people to go for treatment because they think there is absolutely nothing wrong with the way they act. They never get help, just torture the family and people that have to deal with them.
Personally I think the common thread with these shooters is the Internet. They are all isolated in their homes, which the Internet makes very easy to do. They seek out other unstable people discussing disturbing issues on the Internet. It all feeds into their disordered existence.
That is very true also. The problem is that there are many difference forms of mental health issues. It is not a one size fits all, and it cannot be addressed, or treated as such.
And again it is necessary to correct those who think that Ronald Reagan began the dissolution of mental health institutions. The Community Mental Health Act was signed by John F. Kennedy in 1963 and that was what started the emptying out of our asylums.
He may have been motivated by compassion for his high spirited sister, Rosemary, who was institutionalized and ordered lobotomized by their father for being "difficult."
What was to follow was small local communities for the mentally ill. But to this day no government authority has budgeted enough money for the plan to be implemented in any large scale. For this reason the penal system is the largest caretaker of the mentally ill.
I wish people knew the history of our Presidents. It would go a long way toward a rational voting trend.
Not all insane asylums or state hospitals were terrible. There were a lot of compassionate caregivers in many, although there were unintentional abuses by today's standards, such as isolation or restraint. Some were administered by nuns or other untrained people. Most were understaffed and undersupplied. Of course, as in every institution, some cruel people went unpunished.
Today, unmedicated schizophrenic or psychotic people who cannot function in society either end up on the streets or in prison.
Of the mentally ill on the street, the ones who are willing to take meds (commonly long-acting antipsychotics via injection) are already being treated through county mental health facilities. But these people are still homeless. If there is no option to get off the streets and live with family, what is needed is medically administered single housing. Living there should be contingent on taking IM medications to insure compliance with treatment.
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