TooLittleTooLateOrTheWrongThingEntirely

 

 

Introduction/Definition/etc Body Too Late, afaict.  Too little caring, afaict. And The Wrong Thing Entirely Conclusion Discussion Page History Page Statistics Page Views:  since 20080208

 

Introduction/Definition/etc

Some blurb about what the page is about...

 

Body

 

Too Little, Too Late or the Wrong Thing Entirely

 

Unfortunately, that seems to be the experience with a lot of Mental Health Services.

Like many things, it can be a love hate relationship...

 

By the time a developing service like the RRWG proposal items takes to get a

resource 'to market', the environment has changed, and the people involved

may not care anymore.

 

For example, responding to the Michael Kennedy shootings was never really done.

 

Too Late, afaict. 

 

After such an event, people are too mournful and angry to deal rationally

with the issues that led up to it.

 

Virginia Tech shootings, for another example.  Now close to a year later the panel,

makes recommendations and the laws are changing.  But there were precursors

to the event and just locking people up is not the solution, imho.

 

The anger and nastiness towards mental health consumers, survivors, and

ex-patients, is the problem in the first place.  Taking out more frustration,

anger and abuse is not going to help anything.  People with schizophrenia,

and anxiety disorders are likely to get worse by these actions.  So now

people really are out to get people with schizophrenia, and want to lock

people up, force treatment and other such legal measures.

 

Forced treatment is an oxymoron.  Force is not treatment, and treatment

is many times about caring for people.  Forcing that is like rape, mind rape

or otherwise.  Here have these restraints.  Then wonder why that is trauma

inducing?

 

Too little caring, afaict.

 

And not all comsuners/ survivors / expatients are the same.  Mental Illness

and hence mental health is such a wide variety of people.  Like African Americans,

some are running for public office, though most are not.  Mental health has it's

luminaries like Nash winning a Nobel Prize in a Beautiful Mind, but very few

people are like that.  Many are just trying to survive the day to day lives

that poverty and illness bring.  I try to reach people with the almost shock

reporting on this site.  I'm thinking there are people who have similar views

that we don't reach, and with the view counts of these pages, not many

are reached.  Most people want happy recovery stories, but to get to that

point, you have to look at the problems to reach a solution.  Not dwell in the

problems, but you can't blindly ignore that they are there.

 

In a previous bloggings/postings (now in 2008 after two years, more are separate wiki pages

to keep the FrontPage size down), I called for some changes.  'James Thur, Fairfax Falls Church CSB

Executive Director should be fired' and Russell's salary should be $8/ hour.

This is like the judge sentencing slum lords to live in their tenaments

until the place gets cleaned up.  One of my first encounters with Thur was the

Regional Partnerships focus groups on hospital bed shortages.  That was

probably over three years ago, before M. Kennedy and SH Cho shootings.

One can argue that not having access to treatment was the determining

factor in these events.  One could also look at what 'treatments' are available

to people with mental illness/ mental health issues, and you might soon see

that what is needed is not usually what is offered or available.   There is a huge

mismatch between what can be offered and what is needed in this system and others.

 

So when I say James Thurs should be fired, that may not even be the solution.

As the hospital bed shortage (mh beds are not as profitable as surgical beds),

reimbursements and other issues lead up to events like that, consider also

that the public makes some of the problem as well.  That 'crazy guy/girl/teen/kid'

that may be your neighbor, coworker, classmate, relative, friend or stranger, probably

doesn't need you to be harassing them and fearful of them, but the same love and

care that everyone needs.  And sometimes that is more like a tough love situation,

but most of the times not.  Want to know what it is like? Take the hearing voices

training that crisis intervention police and some others have done

(see the recent Street Sense front page article coming online as well)

but mostly it is quiet desperation, like the Valentine's Day holiday coming

up.  Romance and other relationship stuff is difficult enough without an mental

illness.  Try figuring out what that significant other wants for Valentine's Day?

And then consider what it is like for people with mental illnesses.  While many things

are the same and universal, poverty and the needs are greater at times.

 

And The Wrong Thing Entirely

 

And if you slapped someone with restraints/threats of lawyers/hospital stay/

incarceration for Valentine's Day or any other day for that matter,

(assuming not a real S&M relationship), what would your significant other think?

 

And how is that different than what is happening currently in the MH System in

Virginia?

 

 

Conclusion

Or similar

 

Discussion

A place for feedback on the page presented

 

Page History

20080208 Jerry

• Author created this page to do ____....

 

Page Statistics

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