And they’re not in jail, shelters, or on the streets because of what President Reagan so infamously said “that’s where they choose to be”.
They’re there because we as society have failed them and their families. The evidence for this are the facts stated above along with the pervasive stigma and discrimination that persons with mental illness experience (this has lessened but still exists), our dismal healthcare system that is particularly harsh to the mentally ill, inadequate social programs needed for effective community-based treatment (these treatment models that are proven to work do exist in some places, they just don’t exist in nearly enough places because they’re not funded).
These facts are widely known. Ask any member of the Mental Health Caucus of our state legislature or the staff at NAMI-Mass. These facts are why the Massachusetts Health Care Constitutional Amendment language explicitly spells out and seeks to establish a Constitutional guarantee for not only preventive, acute and chronic medical care services, but also for “Mental Health Care Services”.
Check it out for yourself at http://www.HealthCareForMass.org
I agree with everything you said, with the exception of –
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“They’re there because we as society have failed them and their families.”
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I’m with you on the first half of the sentence, but families must take some responsibility. I’m not saying they are necessarily to blame, but we can’t lay the blame entirely on society.
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Why am I nitpicking? Because, aside from my belief that families need to share some of the responsibilty, I think laying the blame entirely on society makes it much more difficult to defend. If you allow even the smallest hole for Republicans to exploit they will.
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AnnEM –
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I share your concern on mental health access, as I agree our approach is dismal. I worked with a “double” (student clinically depressed, but so was mom, therefore hard to arrange access to care) this year. Luckily, Children’s Hospital clinicians have done some terrific work and the student is improving.
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I think a great thing about NAMI is that VOLUNTEERS teach family members how to cope/deal with mental illness. Everyone likes to see folks working hard, with no pay or gov’t $, helping others.
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I would respectfully submit that the MA Health Care Constitutional Amendment is very unlikely to pass.
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How can that be? After all, a Channel 7 poll showed that 61% of those surveyed favor such an amendment.
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That’s because nobody has yet argued the other side. If the amendment actually makes the ballot, opponents will speak up.
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Consider what happened in California with Universal Preschool. Sounded great! Early polls had over 66% of voters favoring the measure. Huge amounts were poured into promoting the measure (as well as huge amounts against). Rob Reiner led the charge.
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Support withered. It lost in mid-June: 61% opposed to 39% in favor. CA is more Dem than MA. And the amendment got crushed.
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Why does this happen? EJ Dionne took a shot at answering.
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If you want to increase mental health services, I’d suggest instead a limited, targeted approach on low-income children with mental health issues…programs with features of choice, cost-control, and accountability (which attracts moderates). Let the skeptics design the evaluations, so if you can make things work, you’ll have them on board for expansion of access.
absolutely, to support the patient and be a part of their treatment plan in appropriate ways, yes.
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Families should NOT be forced into battling “the system” in all too often futile attempts to access needed mental health services for their loved ones. I’ve been there and it’s enough to make the family member clinically depressed.
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It’s totally ridiculous the extent to which this goes on. Contact NAMIMass.org for story after story, some ending with a preventable suicide or homicide. Like the freind of mine whose boyfriend was terribly ill but not deemed sick enough to be hospitalized, then when his behavior really frightened people and the police were called they sat on his chest to restrain him and killed him.
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You can contact me ann@defendhealth.org about what my family went thru fighting to access needed care for my sister’s health care needs–hospitalizations, recommended medications, group home placements (none avail. back then so my mom spent all her savings on a private place in Brookline that was lousy but was “the best around”)after she developed the bio-chemical brain disease called schizophrenia. she’s doing much better now, on Clozapine, and lives in an apt with 2 cats and works part-time at a library.
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To get my sister access to her meds, the one her doctor at McLean recommended, we had to advocate endlessly it seemed and eventually do fierce battle with the director of psychopharmacology at McLeans, then the hospital president (who never returned my calls or letter, and as it turned out he resigned shortly thereafter in a plagarism scandal), and eventually called and wrote to Gov Dukakis and Sen Kennedy who intervened. Yes, it was some years ago.
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After reaching the point of desperation when other family members pretty much gave up, I thought of calling the Gov and Kennedy. The next week my sister was started on her needed medications, which have made a world of difference in her life. No more active psychotic symptoms, no repeated hospitalizations year after year (think of the unecessary expense of that much less the suffering).
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She also was able to escape the horrible side effects of the older meds she’been on which included tremors so severe that she was always spilling things all over herself and ocverd with stains, slurred speech, urinary incontinence at times, and sedation that left her in a druggged haze much of the time–all this when the recommended improved medications existed but “the system” would not allow her access to them.
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Similar stories are being played out in every state across the country. The current political system is largely corrupted by corporate/ industry special interests and the money they wield to exert their power. That’s why citizen activists are fighting for a Massachusetts COnstitutional safeguard, a guarantee to ensure equal access to comprehensive medical care, mental health services, and prescription drugs and devices (such as glucometers, prosthetics, etc).
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The system reform needed to ensure equal access to timely care, reduce costs, and improve quality cannot be achieved incrementally. It’s a waste of time to try and take these on one at a time; each is an inter-related part of the overall healhtcare system. And don’t even get me started on how stupid it is to try and legislate access to care one disease at a time. There’ll always be the poor souls whose diseases are left out. And that approach wastes the opportunity, the value (both economic and humaitarian) of priimary preventive care.
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See BMG post “Healthcare costs cannot be controlled locally”
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The incremental approach of tackling one component of the system at a time just makes things worse in the other areas, which is what you’ll see if you look around–more uninsured in the state than ever, higher costs than ever (highest in the nation, with us taxpayers footing most of the bill), and quality in the tank in many places and not consistently high anywhere/ Look at the IOM report data on preventable medical errors–scary stuff.
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So, knowing much of this to be true and well known, what goes on under “our” golden dome?
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Hmm, which will it be with my bill, issue x, y, or z–access, cost control or quality?
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asks the legislator who wants to try and do something but not do so much that it would cause a real fuss.
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Challenge the immensely powerful “not-for-profit” corporate power structure that controls healhtcare, wields excessive influence over the political process, and you’ll end up in a truss.