chasfm11 wrote: ↑Fri Oct 27, 2023 5:34 am
carlson1 wrote: ↑Thu Oct 26, 2023 7:56 pm
It has been my experience as a Pastor going and visiting in these institutions (mainly Parkland and Terrel) that they do not do a whole lot. I have witnessed more than a dozen times people going in (sometimes on POW) they are given the same drugs that took on the street. Then turned loose with the same drugs they were on. Put a gun in the mix and it is a mess.
I have more experience than I ever wanted with someone that I know who has been in care of both in patient and out patient mental health facilities. I can only call what happens in too many cases that I saw gross incompetence. In fairness, treating mentally ill people is more art than science. Big Pharma has compounded the problem with things like SSRIs. In reality, treatment is dependent on the patient telling the truth to the professionals trying to help them and the patients are often intelligent and manipulative. The Federal government is restricting some key medications because they are additive but is it better to have someone addicted to something that helps them or going untreated? Perhaps the biggest problem with mental health treatment is the stigma attached to it. People are rarely judged for breaking a leg but someone with severe depression or bi-polar disorder needs to be careful with who that information is shared. The public believes that those with mental problems can just think their way out of their issues - and they cannot. The mentally ill have been shunned by society and that isn't changing any time soon. Then, when an incident like this occurs, all that is left is hand ringing - and blaming the guns.
The "promise" of psych meds, I read, was what led to deinstitutionalization in the US.