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My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

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Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#141

Post by bcoates »

tzs wrote: post #3

My old eyes cannot handle very very long lines of very small type, and after several tries I was not able to guess the URL for the story in human friendly form. Please submit links for humans, not machines. Add the machine link in a comment if you wish. PS: I'm aware of Readability and the ability to increase font sizes. There are other problems in general with print links that those do not address: • Print links gen…

Select a clump of 6-8 words from the first paragraph and put the in your search engine of choice. Or narrow your browser window to your preferred reading width.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#142

Post by guylhem »

Title "The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life" - That's interesting. Let's read further.

Extract : The 1980s was the decade when many of the state’s large mental hospitals were emptied (...) I jumped at the opportunity to move people out of "those places" (...) to help manage the transition of people back into the community

(...)

When he was in jail, with its regular routines and meals, Tim usually stabilized. But when he was released (...) he destabilized right away

Ok, we get your point.

But they why giving in conclusion the idea that more money thrown at a problem that seems intractable could solve it??? [Extract: I’d require school administrators (..) I’d put much more money (...) I’d get rid of laws (...) ]

This begs the question : was it considered only once that maybe "humane reforms" had been pushed too far, and that the best outcome would have been reached in a place with " regular routines and meals" where stabilization could have been provided- in other words a good old hospital.

Maybe in the past there were many people in that shouldn't have been there, and the "humane reforms" were then a good idea. But maybe we overdid them and now we make people worse, based on our own idea that people suffering from schizophrenia would be better outside the hospital.

Extract again from the post : "His only furniture was a bare mattress on the floor; a rat and flies were his companions. Sadly, he seemed content. This is the mental health delivery system that I helped build".

Yes the author did, since he considered a patient own evaluation of his situation to be perfectly valid and not in any way damaged by his disease.

It is usually better to respect a person will, self evaluation, etc. But maybe, just like for suicide, when the best judgement seems to no longer work, it is a good thing to ignore it until it can be fixed - if it can.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#143

Post by mst »

cletus wrote: post #64

Things like this are easy to say: > If I were a legislator today, I’d mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses. but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be. I was recently watching a program talking about the somewhat controversial theory that schizophrenia (and other mental disorders) a…

> teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be.

True.

Equally: Programmers aren't operations staff.

But we can damn well learn how to call them in when we need them.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#144

Post by guylhem »

fusiongyro wrote: post #129
mcguire wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" The author is arguing that his son would not be homeless if institutional care had not be shut down " Actually, he isn't . The only institutional care he mentions in the What I realize now section is "supportive short-term and long-term community housing and treatment", which doesn't sound like institutional care, in the sense of "When he was in jail, with its regular routines and meals, Tim usually stabilized". Th…

That's a good point. The article begins with him discussing the shutdown of institutional care in favor of integrative approaches. But you're right, the solution he's promulgating at the end isn't really the same thing.

And that's what shocked me as well. He made the right diagnosis with the right title and the right observations, but jumped to the wrong conclusions :-/

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#145

Post by prodigal_erik »

kyebosh wrote: post #90
debacle wrote: post #10

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'…

> it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society. I'm having trouble getting past this comment. I don't wish to malign you debacle - I'm sure you're not being malicious - but it seems like a very unkind & privileged mindset. I hope this isn't representative of the community. Paul Gionfriddo certainly doesn't consider his son to lack contribution.

I don't see any argument that his son with "no job prospects and a debilitating mental illness" is currently capable of doing work that benefits society. He's rightly only concerned with his son's survival in the crude conditions we provide, and how he might have turned out differently.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#146

Post by guylhem »

Alex3917 wrote: post #105
efa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual? Why are they more likely to hold down a job?

"Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual?" Schizophrenia is basically triggered & exacerbated by stress. If one becomes schizophrenic then it's possible to mostly recover from psychosis in low stress environments, but in higher stress environments it basically becomes permanent. I think that Ethan Watters discusses why it is that people in poor countries do bette…

The stress trigger remains an unproved theory - there are other many potential explains (vitamin D, parasites, sociological baed on family dysfunctions...) but so far there is not a good fit.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#147

Post by paulerdos »

cletus wrote: post #64

Things like this are easy to say: > If I were a legislator today, I’d mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses. but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be. I was recently watching a program talking about the somewhat controversial theory that schizophrenia (and other mental disorders) a…

You wrote "This kinda reminds me of how peptic ulcers were once thought to be caused by stress until they were found to caused by a virus [3].". First of all, if you read the article you reference, you'll note that Heliobacter Pylori is a bacterium, not a virus. Second, the presence of h. pylori in the gut is not conclusively proven to be a causal relationship for ulcers. That is, in some people h. pylori is just part of the normal gut flora. Further, it HAS been shown that stress is a strong cofactor in peptic ulcers.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#148

Post by 001sky »

Alex3917 wrote: post #105
efa wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate? Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual? Why are they more likely to hold down a job?

"Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual?" Schizophrenia is basically triggered & exacerbated by stress. If one becomes schizophrenic then it's possible to mostly recover from psychosis in low stress environments, but in higher stress environments it basically becomes permanent. I think that Ethan Watters discusses why it is that people in poor countries do bette…

Outcome from schizophrenia is routinely better in developing world settings, and this difference becomes apparent during the initial 2 years of illness. But even for developing world patients with a poor early course, outcome is superior to that of developed world patients with an equivalent early course. Employment rates are substantially greater for developing world subjects, and some authors have attributed this to the freedom from the economic disincentives to employment that can accompany the provision of disability benefits in the industrial world (1).

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#149

Post by brownbat »

In a former job, I was confronted with a heartbreaking string of cases of individuals who are homeless, clearly suffering from mental illness, yet repeatedly breaking into local businesses, often not to steal anything of value.

The frustrating choice for those in the prosecutorial or defense systems, is how to best perform your duty to the public and these individuals.

If you simply release them, the business owners continue to face victimization. If you send them to jail, you put them in a completely inappropriate community, and damn them to poor or nonexistent care for complex problems.

It's not isolated cases, mental health issues took up a significant portion of our resources in the criminal justice system (a system that, when overburdened, suffers both Type I and Type II errors simultaneously, leading to higher rates of hasty convictions while also letting more guilty individuals walk free).

The best solution I heard, discussed only in chambers with heavy sighs as to its political infeasibility, was some sort of mental health court, analogous to a drug court.

Drug courts are designed to take a significant number of cases and prosecute them more efficiently, while focusing on what reduces recidivism most, and helps those "offenders" (treatment and monitoring is the general template, though individual cases can be highly customized, rather than one size fits all incarceration).

Drug courts don't always work, sometimes they can be systemically flawed. This American Life presented just such a case a few years ago, describing a judge who abused the process. But in most jurisdictions, drug courts lower costs to the system while putting a lot of people in a far better place.

A similar institution, a "mental health court," might feed people from courtrooms into community treatment facilities, with monitoring and care, while putting them on probation instead of placing them in jail.

This would, of course, work best with significantly increased funding for humane and competent mental treatment facilities. But at least some of those costs would be offset by lower burdens on the justice system and systems of incarceration.

Such a system would certainly help more people, and it deserves wider public discussion.

Re: My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life.

#150

Post by lambdaphage »

cletus wrote: post #64

Things like this are easy to say: > If I were a legislator today, I’d mandate — and provide funding to ensure — that every teacher receive training in recognizing symptoms of mental illnesses. but teachers aren't psychiatrists or clinical psychologists and can't really be expected to be. I was recently watching a program talking about the somewhat controversial theory that schizophrenia (and other mental disorders) a…

> This kinda reminds me of how peptic ulcers were once thought to be caused by stress until they were found to caused by a virus [3].

_H. pylori_ is a bacterium, as your source indicates.

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