Time to bring back asylums? • Hacker News Board

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#61

Post by phatskat » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:31 PM UTC

iancmceachern wrote: post #39

amadeuspagel wrote: post #11

Asylums still exist. What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. A typical case from this time[1]: > [Cramer] frankly discusses the “regimented, often hopeless conditions of state mental hospitals”, talks about a hospital in Alabama where “care was worse than simply inadequate: one psychiatrist for 5000 patients; astonishingly low funding…

Not really at all. In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. We need a way to pay the people that do the work, buy the buildings, keep the lights on. We call this infrastructure asylums, whatever you want to call it we need it desperately. If you want to stop things like what you cited from happening, lobb…

Or make healthcare accessible. Make housing accessible. Make food accessible. We can house feed and care for every person on the planet but we don’t because money. A made up concept that has no actual value outside of what we place on it. It’s arbitrary, as much as markets would want us to believe otherwise. As a species we choose to let them have that power, and with it they will kill us all (seriously)

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#62

Post by coldtea » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:31 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #43

iancmceachern wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really at all. In a sentence, we need a public infrastructure in place to care for the mentally ill that currently are forced to live on the streets of our major cities. We need a way to pay the people that do the work, buy the buildings, keep the lights on. We call this infrastructure asylums, whatever you want to call it we need it desperately. If you want to stop things like what you cited from happening, lobb…

Homeless shelters still exist too. It's not about what to call it, it's about whether people are forced to be there.

If homeless shelters are shitholes, neglected, understaffed, with indifferent and uncaring (or abusing) personnel, with no boundaries between the inmates, so that dangerous and unstable people make it hell for the more well adjusted homeless people living there without recourse, then many or most homeless are not going to want to stay there.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#63

Post by baremetal » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:32 PM UTC

michaelmrose wrote: post #46

iancmceachern wrote: post #38

I've had this conversation with many friends. Totally agree. They need to be good, well run with compassion and care of course. But we indeed need them.

What if most of the people you wish were interred there are competent enough to decide they don't want to be there but not competent enough to meaningfully integrate with society. This can even be true of some who definitely not competent now but would become sufficiently lucid to disinter themselves before discontinuing medication and resuming drinking and drugging.

You need to give them a purpose.

The trades come to mind.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#64

Post by coldtea » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #60

warning26 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. Yes. This is what we need; the fact is, many mentally ill individuals need help, but are not capable of realizing that they need help, and will refuse any attempt to offer it. Without the power to detain such an individual against their will, that person will remain on the streets, which is a…

The issue is that when you carve out exceptions to human rights, they get abused. If you can suspend the rights of someone declared mentally ill, the unscrupulous parts of government will be tempted to declare politically inconvenient people mentally ill and strip them of their rights. Even in the United States, this happened during the suffragette movement; those women hunger striking for the vote were sometimes imp…

Don't worry, in today's climate it will be people outside the consensus opinions of the elites getting locked up, so clearly "bad people" /s

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#65

Post by m463 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:33 PM UTC

amadeuspagel wrote: post #11

Asylums still exist. What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. A typical case from this time[1]: > [Cramer] frankly discusses the “regimented, often hopeless conditions of state mental hospitals”, talks about a hospital in Alabama where “care was worse than simply inadequate: one psychiatrist for 5000 patients; astonishingly low funding…

As someone with direct experience with someone that has a mental illness, there needs to be something better than the present system.

I think something went right, then wrong with the treatment of mental illness in california.

Years ago, when the laws were changed to allow mentally-ill but benign or even non-ill people to escape the "snake pits", lots of people could recover.

But later state mental illness funding was cut.

Now clearly mentally ill people - who needed help - were turned away unless they were clearly "a danger to themselves and others".

Many homeless people are these mentally ill people, and can't get help (and they can't be forced in unless they are dangerous, which is usually how recovery begins).

Additionally, some clearly mentally ill people suffer from anosognosia, which seems to fix their self-image in their mind to eliminate any self doubts or insight into their mental image.

At a minimum, there needs to be a way - with checks and balances - to support recovery for people who don't have insight into their disease, and the current system doesn't provide it.

I also think it would pay for itself, as lots of mentally ill people don't get proper treatment, yet are still a huge burden on the health care system.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#66

Post by phatskat » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:34 PM UTC

amanaplanacanal wrote: post #7

It’s time to make money appear out of nowhere, ignore the long history of abuses in such places, and pretend the courts are going to do a 180 and suddenly allow what was unconstitutional before.

Right? We should stop at allocating money and then pivot to actually making meaningful impact. This article is just a megaphone for people who don’t like seeing how society treats those less fortunate.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#67

Post by wolverine876 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:34 PM UTC

A step like this one establishes the precedent. In a few years, the WSJ will be advocating locking up people they don't like, making they case that they are ipso facto mentally unstable, a threat to society, etc. How about protesters? Left-wing ones, of course.

Many people in business arguably belong in an asylum - how about the wealthiest person in the world? how about some WSJ op-ed writers? crypto bros? some SV VCs? - and mentally unstable people with power are far more threat than the person on the subway.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#68

Post by wtetzner » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:36 PM UTC

warning26 wrote: post #54

amadeuspagel wrote: post #11

Asylums still exist. What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. A typical case from this time[1]: > [Cramer] frankly discusses the “regimented, often hopeless conditions of state mental hospitals”, talks about a hospital in Alabama where “care was worse than simply inadequate: one psychiatrist for 5000 patients; astonishingly low funding…

> What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. Yes. This is what we need; the fact is, many mentally ill individuals need help, but are not capable of realizing that they need help, and will refuse any attempt to offer it. Without the power to detain such an individual against their will, that person will remain on the streets, which is a…

The biggest problem is who gets to decide which individuals "need" help.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#69

Post by phatskat » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:37 PM UTC

creer wrote: post #32

Mental health doesn't have to be done in the most stupid way possible. And yet could be much more present, available, temporary. An institutional system can be built with cross-checks, inspections, corruption fighting mechanisms, etc. By this I mean actual, independent, not powerless, not perfunctory, corruption-fighting, enforceable, etc. As opposed to the usual such cross-checks around here. This is a far broader i…

> An institutional system can be built with cross-checks, inspections, corruption fighting mechanisms, etc. By this I mean actual, independent, not powerless, not perfunctory, corruption-fighting, enforceable, etc.

It can be but not within capitalism. Even if it’s the Best Government Program Ever, eventually it will become public/private, and eventually private. And it will get worse and worse the entire time. Once it’s fully private then it will be incentivized to put people there (if it wasn’t already), and those interred will be used for labor in the worst and likely most potential ways. It’s reinventing prisons.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#70

Post by warning26 » Sat, Jul 22, 2023, 11:37 PM UTC

bobthepanda wrote: post #60

warning26 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What this person wants to bring back is the ability to lock people up and keep people locked up there with little recourse. Yes. This is what we need; the fact is, many mentally ill individuals need help, but are not capable of realizing that they need help, and will refuse any attempt to offer it. Without the power to detain such an individual against their will, that person will remain on the streets, which is a…

The issue is that when you carve out exceptions to human rights, they get abused. If you can suspend the rights of someone declared mentally ill, the unscrupulous parts of government will be tempted to declare politically inconvenient people mentally ill and strip them of their rights. Even in the United States, this happened during the suffragette movement; those women hunger striking for the vote were sometimes imp…

> The issue is that when you carve out exceptions to human rights, they get abused.

Even something as simple as detaining a criminal is "carving out an exception to human rights". You're correct that this could be abused, but so can any law. It's possible to mitigate though; that's the entire reason for the concept of an independent judiciary.