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Thread: Psychiatric Patients With No Place to Go but Jail

  1. #1
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    Default Psychiatric Patients With No Place to Go but Jail

    Psychiatric Patients With No Place to Go but Jail
    Chicago News Cooperative
    Full article; http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/he...o-go.html?_r=1

    (snip)

    About 11,000 prisoners, a mix of suspects awaiting trial and those convicted of minor crimes, are housed at the jail at any one time, which is like stuffing the population of Palos Heights into an eight-block area on Chicago’s South Side. The Cook County sheriff, Tom Dart, estimated that about 2,000 of them suffer from some form of serious mental illness, far more than at the big state-owned Elgin Mental Health Center, which has 582 beds.

    Mr. Dart said the system “is so screwed up that I’ve become the largest mental health provider in the state of Illinois.” The situation is about to get worse, according to Mr. Dart and other criminal justice experts. The city plans to shut down 6 of its 12 mental health centers by the end of April, to save an estimated $2 million, potentially leaving many patients without adequate treatment — some of them likely to engage in conduct that will lead to arrests.

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    This is what happens when you travel the road of good intentions. Everyone knew that the right thing to do was to shut down those evil mental hospitals. But what everyone didn't know is that there was a reason why those hospitals were built in the first place.

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    Oh, Lord yes!!

    My DIL, who is a police officer in a small upstate NY city, spends MOST of her time dealing with various mentally ill people... she gets all the overtime she wants (more than she wants, to be honest) taking people to the nearest hospital with a psych ward for a "48 hour hold"... it ends up being at least a 4 hour- and sometimes 8 or more- round trip. There are times when they have few officers on the street because they're all babysitting psych patients.

    And yes, shutting the mental hospitals and trusting seriously mentally ill people could live independently and take their medicines properly was NUTS.

    Summerthyme

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    Thank you ACLU!

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    Just how safe are your streets when those needing proper care/drugs for an otherwise treatable/controllable mental condition are released onto the streets? We have had two unprovoked murders in recent years in our relatively small midwestern city by 'patients' who were released to the streets and who did not recieve/self-administer the meds they needed to remain non-violent. Other crimes short of murder are also common by previously institutionalized patients.

    There are multitudes of things in today's news to get upset about, but the point be made here is for you and your family to be aware, be prepared. The jungle is becoming even more dangerous.



    The Deepening Crisis in Mental Health Funding
    By Ron Honberg, NAMI Director of Policy and Legal Affairs

    There is no easy way of saying it. After more than four years of budget cutting in many states, the mental health safety net is seriously frayed. In total, more than $1.6 billion in general funds has been cut from state mental health budgets since 2009. When funds under the control of other state agencies such as housing and child and adolescent services or Medicaid are factored in, the sum of the total cuts is undoubtedly significantly higher.
    South Carolina has cut its state mental health budget by the highest percentage, 39.3 percent since 2009, Alabama by 36 percent, Alaska by 32.6 percent, Illinois 31.7 percent and Nevada 28.1 percent. In terms of actual dollars, California has cut a staggering $764.8 million in state mental health funding during this time period, New York $204.9 million and Illinois $187 million.

    the rest of the article; http://blog.nami.org/2011/11/deepeni...al-health.html

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    In Indiana there are what we call 'group' homes, throughout the state. They house juveniles and adults. I am sure we need more but many folks have the feeling....NIMBY...not in my back yard.

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    Quote Originally Posted by AnnieOakley View Post
    In Indiana there are what we call 'group' homes, throughout the state. They house juveniles and adults. I am sure we need more but many folks have the feeling....NIMBY...not in my back yard.

    Ya same here in Michigan. I live behind one. Lots of money to be made off of these homes other wise you woundn't see them. Your government
    has allowed them in residential neighborhoods? When in fact they are commerical business. Remember the Rule of Law is what they want it to be.

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    The heart bleeding liberals of the 60s can be thanked for what we are facing today.
    They were the ones that wanted the 'mental hospitals' closed. Of course there were outright violations of people being put in these hospitals, but there were many that were a danger to themselves and society.

    But that isn't the way they shut them down. It was all mental patients booted out and the facilities were closed, and yes group homes were an alternate to the hospitals,but most of those using them are harmless folk that have a low mental capacity and most wouldn't hurt a fly.

    We have a group home about a mile or so from our house and from the outside it looks like every other home near it.
    Until you see the huge van loaded with what looks like at least 8-10 people in it heading out somewhere.

    I live too far from it to know if there are problems there.

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    I remember back in the '70's when our state shut down one of the main state mental health hospitals to save money. Many of those people were tossed out into the streets, but several were placed into nursing homes that were NOT equipped, or staffed with trained mental health care nurses. The patients were simply kept heavily medicated to maintain control.

    I don't know if in reality it ever saved much of anything. Displaced workers found new jobs, displaced people collected welfare or SSI. Anyone who broke the law was jailed and had to be maintained. All it really did was cause a lot of suffering, and shifted the ledgers to reflect that money wasn't going in the same direction...it went in a different direction.
    As an American you have the right to not believe in guns. You also have the right to not believe in God. But if someone is trying to break into your home, or wants to harm you, the first thing you will do is pick up the phone and call someone with a gun. The second thing you will do is pray that they get there in time. ~Don Moore

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    Quote Originally Posted by timbo View Post
    The heart bleeding liberals of the 60s can be thanked for what we are facing today.
    They were the ones that wanted the 'mental hospitals' closed. Of course there were outright violations of people being put in these hospitals, but there were many that were a danger to themselves and society.

    But that isn't the way they shut them down. It was all mental patients booted out and the facilities were closed, and yes group homes were an alternate to the hospitals,but most of those using them are harmless folk that have a low mental capacity and most wouldn't hurt a fly.

    We have a group home about a mile or so from our house and from the outside it looks like every other home near it.
    Until you see the huge van loaded with what looks like at least 8-10 people in it heading out somewhere.

    I live too far from it to know if there are problems there.
    Governor "Moonbeam" shut 'em down in CA some years back. No real problem, though, most of the patients eventually went into politics and gummint...

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