31–40 of 145 posts
What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?
Unfortunately you would be amazed and ashamed. In the USA it's estimated that one third of the homeless people suffer a serious mental illness. I live in the Netherlands and I think the numbers are the same here. Ofcourse there is help but most homeless people move around a lot so it can be difficult to track them and help them. Also: having worked with homeless people I know for sure they will get some kind of menta…
80% of the homeless in the Netherlands suffer from mental illnesses. Source (in Dutch): http://www.ontmoeting.org/dak_thuislozen I guess the explanation for the difference is that the social security system in the Netherlands is better, so there's less chance for ending up in the street when you lose your job.
What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?
Forcibly institutionalizing people is not a panacea.
If he were to have been hospitalized, not institutionalized, I wonder if the outcome were the same.
Our society assumes mental illness is totally different from physical illness, but in cases like schizophrenia the treatment ends up being very similar. You take your pills and see a doctor. If he had the flu and had suddenly taken a turn for the worse, the discussion wouldn't have been about institutionalization. He would have received treatment in a hospital and then been discharged as soon as possible.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Mentally ill persons enjoy the same rights that other citizens enjoy and have their own free will. As long as a person didn't commit any crime and is no risk to society or oneself you cannot institutionalize him or her. In any case I would refrain from making such broad generalizations about a society. Some societies prefer strong individual rights and others prefer a strong state that tells them what to do.
I doubled a mentally ill person has anything resembling "free will"...
Often persons will be categorized as mentally ill just because they deviate in their beliefs or lifestyle from the mainstream culture.
And yes, mentally ill persons HAVE a free will, don't tell me they don't as this would be equal to declaring that they are not human beings but just a lump of meat.
They have feelings, desires and goals like anyone else, it's just that these in some cases may be very different from yours or mine.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many mentally ill people are still in a position where they can still make decisions for themselves, but their illness means that they choose things that are ostensibly bad for them eg refusing help to get off the streets, help with addiction, stopping them committing suicide, etc. That means society has to decide between forcing people to do things against their will or respecting their decision even though it's wha…
In fact, the absolute worst thing you can do with someone whose still "fighting" is to institutionalise them. Once you label and stigmatise them that way, they tend to give up fighting, and whatever benefit they were to society, even in a limited capacity, is then lost. You want them to keep fighting.
What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?
On my darker days I sometimes think we live in a hell-on-earth. In our fiction we describe whole worlds where the Damned are left to shamble around and fend for themselves, cut off from the warmth of humanity. We depict hell as a plane of the existence where the Lost are cut off from all that is right and good in the world, pitched overboard into un-ending darkness and despair. It's hard not to draw parallels.
What kind of society lets a mentally ill man roam the streets, deteriorating, instead of institutionalising him and helping him recover?
What gives you the authority to institutionalize him?
This isn't a snide question. It's a very difficult question that leads to a whole raft of difficult questions.
How do you force a person to take their medication? Why should you do it for this particular person but not that particular person? Who is responsible for the cost of doing so?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an idea by the writer, almost lost in the article, that I thought is brilliant: "When he was in hospital without any documents or ID I came up with the idea of medical bracelets for homeless people. I bought about 100 waterproof USB wristbands which can hold important information and I've given away about 60 so far." There are any number of people made homeless through mental illness. They are often lost in t…
Couldn't the same thing be done by a wristband with just a shortened weblink. The advantage is you could update the website and the link could be engraved on the wristband.
Maybe retina scans or something like that?