The mental health services through the school failed yet much of the outcry now is because there's not enough counselors and mental health services in the schools.
The mental health services through the school failed yet much of the outcry now is because there's not enough counselors and mental health services in the schools.
I thought it was the fault of the NRA? I thought it was Trumps fault?
Help me out here....who's fault is it?
White Privilege.
This is to be a great vehicle for change(never let a crisis go to waste). The fault is to be spread around on everything on the right for not agreeing with, doing, funding, everything some on the left want.
We can't let that happen.
If they can add more councilors and more mental health services, they can provide more failing mental health services through the schools......
Much effort and publicity has been expended over the years in the effort to eradicate the stigma that diagnoses and treatment of mental illnesses impart on patients. The failure of Mental Health Professionals that interacted and treated the Parkland Killer to inform Federal Authorities and thus to restrict his ability to purchase firearms may be related to a reluctance to hurt their patient’s future career opportunities. Well, he found a career for himself! No one wants to be called crazy and no professional wants to hang this moniker on anyone. Whether they want to admit it, or not, there are crazy people out hear among us.
The existence of large, centralized and integrated facilities designed for diagnostics, treatment and sometimes permanent housing of dangerous or behaviorally degenerate, incompetent patients are now extinct (following exposes of abuse and inadequate care in some of these institutions) and is now replaced by a diffused system that attempts to provide care and maintenance of patients out in communities (Mainstreaming).
Mainstreaming is a very idealistic concept that places the onus of insuring the adequacy of care, interventions and compliance with care plans on the patients themselves, assigned guardians and overworked mental health professionals. The truth is that the current system is about as efficient at delivering the appropriate services as a blind man who is trying to play ‘Wak A Mole’.
The costs for providing a an effective community based mental healthcare system would be enormous: Administration; medical record keeping; professional assessments, individualized care plan care formulation, patient progress and care plan modification; documentation; medications delivery, storage, and patient compliance with medication regimen; patient housing; and patient tracking are some of the elements at play in community based mental health care. Federal as State Regulations covering the prescription practices and renewals now require frequent face to face patient/practitioner contact. Mental patients are often no-show and their medication regimens suddenly cease. This can be dangerous as some psychoactive medications can have unpredictable effects if not properly adjusted or substituted.
Mentally Ill people are very difficult to treat effectively. They are notoriously non-compliant regarding their participation with planned interventions and medication regimens. They too often just stop taking necessary prescriptions and wander off (many are homeless) or become agitated and sometimes violent. These people have a high incidence of Addiction to Illicit Drugs, Prescription Drugs and Alcohol. Substance Abuse is often a factor related to exacerbation of Psychological Problems as well as an incentive to resort to crime to support their addictions. For this reason and because of other episodic, aggressive behavioral issues, Mental Patients have a high rate of contact with Law Enforcement and comprise a large percentage among inmates of jails and prisons where they continue to remain untreated.
The severely mentally ill, or even those with treatable conditions, are difficult to employ. Health Insurance Policies most often have Cap Limits for Mental Health related coverage and Health Insurance is no longer a dependable employment benefit. Mental Health Services are expensive and most families on limited budgets cannot afford adequate care. Unemployed adults who are mentally ill certainly can’t afford services. Courts, I suspect, are reluctant to adjudicate the mentally as ‘In Need of Services’ just because the communities they serve are financially incapable of funding required services.
Federal, State and Local Officials including State Health Departments are certainly aware of the inadequacy of funding needed to pay for this really big problem, but conversations on these levels (where the true hopelessness they face is discussed) is not open to the public audience. The issue is so complicated, and the problems so impossible to solve, that this issue does not appear in any Political Platforms as any promises that are made would be impossible to fulfill. So, Mental Health is quietly ignored in the hope that it will not sneak up and bite everyone on the ass.....like it did in Parkland.
In conclusion, the historical method for housing and treating the severely or dangerously mentally ill in large, centralized institutions, was discontinued because it was deemed inhumane and cruel despite the facts that patient care in these facilities could be safely and properly delivered at the most efficient cost. So, as a society, we are left with an ineffective and dysfunctional Mental Healthcare System that leaves non-compliant, potentially dangerous mentally ill persons out in our schools, communities and incarceration facilities where citizens come in contact unaware of the danger they present. Proponents of Community Based Mental Health Programs and Advocates defending this troubled population publicly claim ‘Most Mentally Ill Persons are Harmless’, but the operative word there is ‘most’. It is amazing to see just how much havoc one of their clients can create when they have the chance. I strongly suspect that informed Public Officials are desperately trying to solve the public safety issue inherent with the Mentally Ill wandering out in our communities by treating the entire public as if everyone is Mentally Ill and therefore to remove every possible device or substance capable of use for harm from access to the public and thus they promote the ‘Nanny State’.
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So...Hollywood and activist lawyers are at fault:
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" demonized confined mental health care
Activist lawyers no doubt worked simultaneously to make it much more difficult to institutionalize the mentally disturbed
The catalyst for change that rapidly eliminated Centralized Mental Health Institutions was Geraldo Rivera’s 1972 Expose’ on the Willowbrook State School in New Jersey. He got some sickening scenes of what appeared to show terrible neglect (some might have been valid), but failed to inform the public honestly as to the near impossibility of providing aesthetically appropriate care, and the hopeless outlook for recovery of the seriously mentally ill and mentally impaired.
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We have to find a way to separate these folks from becoming a danger to society.
There are nursing homes that have exhibited the same lack of care as Willowbrook, but we still have nursing homes and memory care units.
Fix the offenders, and not the system.
One of the main things needed is reality and accountability. Mental health care is important but when things like the school counselor ignoring warning signs, or the Colorado theater shooter's college shrink failing to warn authorities and being the type to get reprimanded for prescription fraud, then considering the fact that Adam Lanza's shrink destroying records and fleeing the country
The outcry about the institutions started with the 1946 Bedlam issue of Life Magazine. Kennedy did the1963 Community Mental Health Act (also known as the Mental Retardation and Community Mental Health Centers Construction Act of 1963) But big changes didn't start until California shut it's institutions in 67 under Reagan, then as president he repealed The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (OBRA). Many consider both decisions to be about finances as opposed to the well being of patients.
https://mn.gov/mnddc/parallels2/prologue/6a-bedlam/6a-bedlam.html
https://www.thenationalcouncil.org/...ciation/overview/community-mental-health-act/
http://sites.psu.edu/psy533wheeler/...tion-of-mentally-ill-patients/comment-page-1/
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