crack baby
2006-08-13 15:59:21 UTC
I am advocating for a sharp reduction in mental health spending. While we
hear constant calls for spending to be increased, I'm going to argue that
spending be reduced to the minimum amount needed to treat legitimately
psychotic people who pose a danger to others.
My experience involves a schizophrenic friend off his meds and my
brother who suffered a severe manic psychosis from crystal meth. In
both cases I drove them all over town looking for some way to get a
psychiatrist to see them and give them meds. The mental hospital
refused to admit my brother, and even though my friend was a regular
patient at the mental hospital, it still was difficult and very
inconvenient to get them to let him see a doctor. My family finally
had to petition for involuntary commitment, and they held him for two
weeks before releasing him (they were going to release him after the
first week until he blabbered that he could talk to dead people during
his judicial review hearing).
So I should be advocating INCREASED public spending on mental health.
But then I heard about what is happening in Oceania (I mean the UK),
where the lavishly-funded National Health Service also pays for mental
health "treatment" and as a result just about every annoying behavior
humans might exhibit is re-defined as "antisocial behaviour" and the
offender sentenced to counseling or therapy in a re-education centre.
Now they have begun incarcerating people for being too fat, on the
grounds that their unhealthy eating habits qualifies as posing a threat
to oneself and ground for involuntary commitment in a NHS mental
hospital.
We already see a scenario looming here in America, though we don't yet
have national health care. Among those of us lucky to have health
insurance of any type, there is usually a disparity between authorized
physical and mental treatments. Mental-health advocates argue that
mental disorders are just as debilitating as physical disorders and
should therefore be equally covered by insurance plans, and of course
by public programs like Medicaid. But unlike physical disorders that
can be seen, x-rayed, chemically-tested, etc., mental disorders are
rather intangible and aside from the patient's testimony there really
is no evidence that they exist or that any alleged treatment actually
worked.
My fear is that mandatory equal coverage will result in psychologists
sucking billions of dollars out of the system to the detriment of
people with real physical ailments. Sick people will wait longer and
longer for vital tests, treatments, surgeries, etc. because the
system now must pay tens of thousands of psycholalagists $500/hour to
perform the essential service of listening to millions of fuckups
bitch about their childhoods and/or dead housepets. And if you combine
socialized medicine with equal coverage, you wind up like Great Britain
where the benevolent socialist nanny state can afford to lock you up
for annoying them by being too fucking fat. So now my philosophy is
that allowing my utterly insane brother to roam loose is preferable to
allowing the state to lock me up for being too fat, not eating my
veggies, and not flossing properly after meals.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."
-- 1984
------------------------------------------------------------
hear constant calls for spending to be increased, I'm going to argue that
spending be reduced to the minimum amount needed to treat legitimately
psychotic people who pose a danger to others.
My experience involves a schizophrenic friend off his meds and my
brother who suffered a severe manic psychosis from crystal meth. In
both cases I drove them all over town looking for some way to get a
psychiatrist to see them and give them meds. The mental hospital
refused to admit my brother, and even though my friend was a regular
patient at the mental hospital, it still was difficult and very
inconvenient to get them to let him see a doctor. My family finally
had to petition for involuntary commitment, and they held him for two
weeks before releasing him (they were going to release him after the
first week until he blabbered that he could talk to dead people during
his judicial review hearing).
So I should be advocating INCREASED public spending on mental health.
But then I heard about what is happening in Oceania (I mean the UK),
where the lavishly-funded National Health Service also pays for mental
health "treatment" and as a result just about every annoying behavior
humans might exhibit is re-defined as "antisocial behaviour" and the
offender sentenced to counseling or therapy in a re-education centre.
Now they have begun incarcerating people for being too fat, on the
grounds that their unhealthy eating habits qualifies as posing a threat
to oneself and ground for involuntary commitment in a NHS mental
hospital.
We already see a scenario looming here in America, though we don't yet
have national health care. Among those of us lucky to have health
insurance of any type, there is usually a disparity between authorized
physical and mental treatments. Mental-health advocates argue that
mental disorders are just as debilitating as physical disorders and
should therefore be equally covered by insurance plans, and of course
by public programs like Medicaid. But unlike physical disorders that
can be seen, x-rayed, chemically-tested, etc., mental disorders are
rather intangible and aside from the patient's testimony there really
is no evidence that they exist or that any alleged treatment actually
worked.
My fear is that mandatory equal coverage will result in psychologists
sucking billions of dollars out of the system to the detriment of
people with real physical ailments. Sick people will wait longer and
longer for vital tests, treatments, surgeries, etc. because the
system now must pay tens of thousands of psycholalagists $500/hour to
perform the essential service of listening to millions of fuckups
bitch about their childhoods and/or dead housepets. And if you combine
socialized medicine with equal coverage, you wind up like Great Britain
where the benevolent socialist nanny state can afford to lock you up
for annoying them by being too fucking fat. So now my philosophy is
that allowing my utterly insane brother to roam loose is preferable to
allowing the state to lock me up for being too fat, not eating my
veggies, and not flossing properly after meals.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Thoughtcrime does not entail death: thoughtcrime IS death."
-- 1984
------------------------------------------------------------