America Has No Way to Take Care of Mentally Ill People

With evermore unhoused people on the streets of our biggest cities, and publicized subway crimes in New York, mental health treatment is again in the news. Politicians speak about “caring” for the mentally ill in a new way, which turns out to be the old way—putting them away. The mention of involuntary confinement, predictably, sparks anxiety and controversy, giving rise to the question of whom this policy is meant to help: the people taken away or the rest of population, those shopping, jogging, carrying groceries home, who, presumably, will no longer be bothered by the inconvenient reality of a person speaking to God, while blocking the sidewalk. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Nonetheless, whether or not present laws limiting involuntary commitments should be altered, as proposed by New York Mayor Eric Adams and California Governor Gavin Newsom, the real question is where would the mentally ill be taken and how would they be treated? As it is, there is no adequate system in place. There are not enough psychiatric beds available for even the short holds now stipulated by law. The closest state mental health hospital still open near to where I live is fifty miles away in Norwalk, California. Metropolitan, as the hospital is ironically named, includes, as several of the old asylums still standing do, a museum of itself, put together by people who once worked there, memorializing what the hospital had once been: a vast complex that housed and tre...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized freelance Psychology Source Type: news