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Time to bring back asylums?

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Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#271

Post by _8j50 »

doctor_eval wrote: post #254
_8j50 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes they would, we are not talking about mental/physical handicapped people here. It's people who are already in mainstream society and end up being insane from the perspective of society, they can still fish, hunt, farm. Moreover, concerned people or even the government can provide them aid if they need it, they are still citizens.

How many regular people do you think are able to fish, hunt and farm - and whose life now depends on it? What about agoraphobics or germaphobes? Who will give up the very valuable arable land and clean water needed for these activities? Who will teach them to do it? It’s very difficult to shake the idea that you’re trolling.

I am very serious, I too can't shake the idea that you don't get this is a choice. If you choose this, you prepare for it or you have accepted this future. I am not suggesting this as punishment but as an option to existing punishment, to being thrown into jails and asylums. Would you not prefer to be allowed to live in a forest or some set aside survivable place than rot in an institution? I am even all for basic survival training if people choose it.

America was built by people that kept migrating to the west to live out their ways or as punishment. Same with australia. The only thing new in my suggestion is having it be a consensual option.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#272

Post by newaccount74 »

imgabe wrote: post #258
abenga wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is _right now, as we speak_ there is a concerted effort to roll back rights and freedoms women and gay people have enjoyed for years; you should not give people doing this more tools to harm people.

There is also right now an epidemic of homeless people harassing, assaulting, and even murdering people and generally making major cities nearly unlivable. So when you create a false dichotomy between "treat mentally ill people who might murder you" or "lock up gay people", YOU are in fact giving tools to the people who want to lock up gay people. However much your average, non-gay person supports rights for gay peop…

> we just might be able to do both things

Yes. But there is no easy solution. History shows that anything that involves locking up people because they might commit a crime will result in innocent people being locked up and abused.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#273

Post by imgabe »

vel0city wrote: post #242
imgabe wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think coming up with a comprehensive mental health policy is a little beyond the scope of a HN comment, and certainly far beyond my expertise. I merely posit that such a policy could exist, and could be developed. I don't see why not. I mean, the comments here are like "b-b-but homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness!". Right, it was , but now it's not . So it seems pretty clear that to prevent people…

Homosexuality is still on the books as a crime in the State of Texas and probably elsewhere, it's only a 2003 Supreme Court case that makes it unenforceable. A court case a lot of people on the Court wouldn't mind overturning, I might add. You may think these things are way in the past, but to many who aren't even that grey haired it was only yesterday. I'm not necessarily arguing for or against asylums, but just arg…

> But honestly, there's a lot of people still out there that think differently. And in some ways, they're gaining influence and power.

They're gaining influence and power, in large part, because the people who would oppose them are advocating things like letting the mentally ill live in tents on the street and do whatever they want. People rightly see that this policy produces bad results and don't support the people who advocate for the bad policy. Unfortunately, that leaves only one other choice in our two party system.

The solution is to stop supporting bad policies, and advocate for better ones instead, that fix known problems while also working to preserve peoples' rights.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#274

Post by SamReidHughes »

vore wrote: post #268
SamReidHughes wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about housing. They can leave the west coast and live someplace cheaper.

But... why? Why can't we also build more affordable housing as well instead of just making rich people enclaves? If you're forcing all the low income people to live in one place, that is clearly not good for class mobility at all.

You're talking about people who work -- the homeless, well, the chronically homeless, are people who don't work.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#275

Post by ThinkBeat »

Hell no and yes.

Asylums in the post were often horrid places of torture and severe lack of productive treatment. (Here I define productive treatment, as treatment tailored for the patient with an aim of improving their quality fo life and their ability to cope. It might very well not be able to make the patient able to function in society but it can help give them a better life)

We have this in a different form now in prisons. Due to lack of universal healthcare and for-profit prisons and "what the hell todo"

Prisons are today's asylums, and it has a severe lack of productive treatment.

Good, appropriate care in a safe environment, for both the patient, health workers and society. This works for the majority of cases.

Then you have a small group of patients who are downright dangerous for all. They can either be kept in a mental health hospital and drugged into a calmer state (not ideal), or be kept in prison or prison like surroundings (not ideal). For them we do not yet have an ideal model of treatment that does not impose a severe treath to personell.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#276

Post by bobsmooth »

danShumway wrote: post #198
novok wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asylums are prison type 2, and I am already subjected to the possibility of prison for crimes. Most arguments against asylums is an argument against criminal prosecution, police and prisons in general. Make the standards the same then and only subject to committing an actual crime in the first place?

I frankly don't believe that the majority of people advocating for forced institutionalization are going to be satisfied by waiting for someone to commit a crime. I think the majority of people advocating for the return of asylums want the State to be able to commit citizens to asylums before they do anything criminal. Like you said, prison exists. And I will happily advocate for prison reforms within the existing le…

>People here are advocating that the government should have the ability to forcibly commit someone to an asylum.

The state already has the ability to forcibly confine people. We just think that some people would do better in a hospital than a prison.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#277

Post by 01100011 »

advisedwang wrote: post #244

The issues with mental health care are largely a lack of funding (including via insurance). If you are going to fund an asylum system well enough to be effective, you could fund our current system. If you are not going to fund it, you are literally reproducing the cycle that resulted in underfunded, abusive and hidden asylums of the 19th and 20th centuries.

I'll assert that, in the current economic environment, you can't staff it even if you reasonably fund it. i.e. you will not find enough applicants who will stick with the job even at insane and unsustainable wages.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#278

Post by creata »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #256
imgabe wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago a woman was murdered on the block where I worked. She was out jogging in the evening and was stabbed by a schizophrenic homeless man. The murderer had been arrested several times, they knew he was ill, but he couldn't be forced to receive treatment. What's the solace you offer for her family? "Hey sorry your daughter got killed, but maybe people won't be unjustly institutionalized in this hypothetical…

Thank you. These people that demand perfection are poison to any kind of progress, and one of the reasons the US is an increasing failure. Was recently in Asia, and the contrast was clear as day.

I'm not demanding perfection. I'm literally just asking "what would be different this time", and the only answer I'm getting is "we know better this time around".

Seriously: the reason asylums were so prone to abuse in the past was not because the people running them didn't know better.

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#279

Post by [deleted] »

mlyle wrote: post #259
ec109685 wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is an ER fundamentally so much more expensive than another office visit? Just an anecdote, I don’t see any late night “urgent care” places anymore. If they were sufficiently less expensive than ERs, it seems like insurance companies would incentivize them to have longer hours. Otherwise, after 9pm, you have to go to ER.

> Why is an ER fundamentally so much more expensive than another office visit? Two main reasons: you need to use personnel, equipment, and rooms that can offer the highest levels of care. And you need to pay for having a facility staffed to handle worst case loading (with triage) 24/7. You also tend to have pretty exhaustive testing on the "emergent" side to make sure everything is immediately OK prior to discharge.

[deleted]

Re: Time to bring back asylums?

#280

Post by noelwelsh »

"A much higher percentage of the population suffer from mental illness in more unequal countries; differences in inequality tally with more than triple the differences in the percentage of people with mental illness in different countries.

Rates of depression in US states are associated with income inequality (after adjusting for income, proportion of population with a college degree and proportion over 65). The more unequal the state, the higher the prevalence of depression."

(https://equalitytrust.org.uk/health)

If you want to actually address the problem you'd look at inequality, and all the many problems that stem from it. But this is the WSJ, so I guess they prefer to throw poor people into jail, err, asylums, when they been broken by the current system and have no economic value.

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