This is often discussed among homeless advocates, because such a large percentage of homeless have mental illnesses of various kinds.
I do think reform had quite a bit arguing for it: old-style "insane asylums" were really not nice places, and involuntary commitment was used fairly widely, at times even producing involuntary surgeries (like the notorious period in which involuntary lobotomies were performed), which I think are serious problems for civil liberties and easily abused. But the problem is that we just closed the asylums and didn't replace them with much of anything at all, in most states not even voluntary facilities that people can check themselves in to.
"Every year, one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." 1/16 adults having a serious mental illness seemed awfully high to me, but I went and looked it up and that may actually be low-balling it: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-coun...
I don't really like the term 'mental illness', not so much because of the stigma attached to it, but because the term implies there is some 'normal' from which only a small subsection of the population deviates. In reality, there is no 'normal'. There is no one person with perfect mental health; perfect clarity of thought, perception, of feeling and action. Everyone, to put things bluntly, is a little fucked up. Thus…
There's a significant difference between the casual DSM-reader's "everyone's got a diagnosis" and problems that lead to significant dysfunction. Even if you're only looking at the "entry level", there is a difference not only in magnitude but in kind between having the blues, or even having life-altering acute sadness, and being what a clinician would call depressed. Similarly, there's a huge difference between, say, believing in the lamed vavniks (that there are, at all times, 36 truly righteous people roaming the planet doing good — the idea being that you might be one of them, and breaking with that nature could have some nasty consequences in the hereafter) and believing that Murray next door is really the archangel Gabriel in human form. Or wondering if that cute barista is flirting with you and interpreting the name written on your cup as a love letter. We may all be a little fucked up, but only a little.
You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to one of the most tragic diseases known to man. Schizophrenia is not the kind of disease you can treat with an IEP, and it sounds like the author's son fell out of the system from a very young age. Trying to blame anything but genetics and development for his son'…
This fatalistic attitude isn't wrong, but it is manifestly unhelpful and surprisingly expensive. Being homeless is not a zero-cost alternative to real treatment; in many cases, the cost of lavish treatment is far lower than the cost of ER visits and criminal proceedings that would otherwise be incurred. I believe Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about chronic homelessness a few years ago, about Denver rolling out a…
It's 2012 - no one in the world should go homeless, unclothed, or hungry. It's inhumane.
But I don't think that's what this article was about.
Some problems just don't have good solutions. We're so used to political debates where the Republicans say "less regulation will solve X", the Democrats say "more spending will solve X", the libertarians say "X is none of the government's business", and each suggests that things will go swimmingly under their preferred way of attacking the problem. Some things, though, just suck. Schizophrenia is one of those things.…
Tragedy yes, though I do believe that if it was caught earlier and appropriate help was provided while the child was younger. The tragic outcome may have been avoided. There are a lot of people who live with Schizophrenia and live 'relatively' productive lives. I believe he could have been one too.
You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to one of the most tragic diseases known to man. Schizophrenia is not the kind of disease you can treat with an IEP, and it sounds like the author's son fell out of the system from a very young age. Trying to blame anything but genetics and development for his son'…
Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease that can absolutely be treated with a comprehensive treatment plan, including medication and psychosocial interventions (including an IEP).
I didn't think the author was stating that his son wouldn't have schizophrenia if the schools had done better. I think he was saying that his son would have a better outcome with his chronic severe mental illness if various government agencies and actors were better organizing to identify and treat the illness.
Perhaps it's fair to say that Tim is where he is today because of his mental illness and a host of public policy decisions we've made in this country around how we treat mental illness.
You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to one of the most tragic diseases known to man. Schizophrenia is not the kind of disease you can treat with an IEP, and it sounds like the author's son fell out of the system from a very young age. Trying to blame anything but genetics and development for his son'…
This fatalistic attitude isn't wrong, but it is manifestly unhelpful and surprisingly expensive. Being homeless is not a zero-cost alternative to real treatment; in many cases, the cost of lavish treatment is far lower than the cost of ER visits and criminal proceedings that would otherwise be incurred. I believe Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about chronic homelessness a few years ago, about Denver rolling out a…
> when it makes both ethical and financial sense.
It saves money on a small scale because no one's trying to defraud it yet.
This is a tough story of a state legislator who became an adoptive father finding out that policies that he thought were humane reforms didn't end up helping people in this generation like his adoptive son. Some of my perspective on these issues comes from knowing Irving Gottesman, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Gottesman who was credited as the main adviser on schizophrenia relied on by the author of the book A…
"mostly do a remarkably poor job in those important tasks anyway"
When you consider that (probably) most of the people who exhibit serious substance abuse problems are self-medicating, the numbers aren't difficult to digest. (I say this not as somebody with studies in hand, but as a person who's been clean and sober for more than a quarter-century, and who has significant experience dealing with other addicts and alcoholics. One can make pretty reliable predictions about underlying…
What underlying issues do you see with someone who takes psychedelics (shrooms, LSD, DMT, etc)?
Hmmm let me try…
Psychedelics -> Social rejection
MDMA -> Problems with parents
Weed -> Infantilism
Alcohol -> low IQ
NOTE: they are not absolute (e.g IQ below average), but relative to what would make that particular individual comfortable given the life challenges he deals with at the time.
I don't really like the term 'mental illness', not so much because of the stigma attached to it, but because the term implies there is some 'normal' from which only a small subsection of the population deviates. In reality, there is no 'normal'. There is no one person with perfect mental health; perfect clarity of thought, perception, of feeling and action. Everyone, to put things bluntly, is a little fucked up. Thus…
This has long been my opinion. I worked with kids at a YMCA in a wealthy area, I would say 50% of them were diagnosed ADHD. I think if it's 50%, then it's just normal. 50 years ago ADHD was normal--we hadn't set our bar there yet.
But there's a world of difference between ADHD and schizophrenia.
His son might not have been contributing, but having him homeless and bouncing in and out of jails is more expensive to society than appropriate institutional support. Furthermore one of the stated issues is his unwillingness to take antipsychotic medication, and one of the characteristic traits is that in a structured jail environment, where he's presumably receiving those medications, he is able to function well. T…
Anti-psychotic medication isn't like taking Tylenol. It can completely change a person's personality, and people have likened it to living in a fog.
Agreed - I cannot find any fault in any of your arguments. My brother in law has schizophrenia and takes anti-psychotics. He sleeps all the time, finds it hard to concentrate and lives in a permanent fog.
He needs these medications. But it has definitely changed him.