Why Can't America Care for the Mentally Ill? ---- Dr. Ablow

PBulldog2 wrote:Dr. Ablow, a psychiatrist for Fox News, tells it as it is:

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/12/17/why-cant-america-care-for-mentally-ill/

From the article:

Some will say that gun control is the answer, but that ignores the obvious: Too many guns isn’t the issue; too little mental health care is.

We now have a mental health care system that simply ignores those among us who suffer with incapacitating symptoms of psychiatric illness and whose suffering can—only in a very, very small percentage of cases, thankfully—lead to terrible violence.

Focusing on gun control does more than squander the time and effort of our public officials and state resources and town police forces, it distracts us dangerously from the real work that must be done.

America’s mental health care system is shattered and on its knees.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/12/17/why-cant-america-care-for-mentally-ill/#ixzz2FQ3zd1oW


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Joanimaroni wrote:Lanza had been burning himself with a lighter for over a year...and yet his mother did not see a need to seek counseling nor did she keep her extensive arsenal under lock and key.

Sal wrote:

Joanimaroni wrote:Lanza had been burning himself with a lighter for over a year...and yet his mother did not see a need to seek counseling nor did she keep her extensive arsenal under lock and key.

This is pure speculation on your part.

You have no idea what counseling or medical treatment he was receiving, and you certainly have no idea what sort of security measures she was utilizing regarding her firearms. He obviously had access

I've read that she was totally devoted to the care of her son, and was meticulous about firearm safety. I read that also but that doesn't mean he was receiving professional help. This was a kid in need of help.

Adam was apparently very smart, in addition to being very disturbed, and may have devised a way to circumvent her security measures.

I know you're looking for someone to blame, but you may want to wait for the facts before casting aspersions. I am going by reports from Mrs. Lanza's friends and others close to the family...it has been reported Adam had burned himself and that Adam was unable to feel pain/or show emotion (sociopathetic behaviour)

Joanimaroni wrote:

Nekochan wrote:Thank you, PB.

2seaoat wrote:I think cutting funding for mental health programs is the least efficient cuts which can be made in our budgets. I had the pleasure of attending a 16 hour mental health first aid program which I hope will spread through this country like it has in Australia and now some European nations.

We need all of our citizens to better understand the spectrum of mental illness. How to identify it. How on first contact to help a person who is in need of care, and most importantly when to take steps and call authorities when a person is a risk to themselves or others. This must be a national goal. We must in our collective be able to render immediate care and referrals and have the resources allocated to address this growing and neglected problem.

However, with all that said......we still have a problem with guns and vehicles. A person who is self medicating because of mental illness and is driving drunk with a 2k lb vehicle which kills a family, should probably have had a referral, but damn......why does the car even start when we have the technology to stop that person from driving.

A troubled youth who has access to weapons can hop in the car and drive over to a school and shoot kids.....sure a referral may have saved those kids, but damn it why was he able to take guns which were not his and drive to a school to kill, when we have the technology which could stop him from driving with guns which are not on his foid card......so as much as I want more resources poured into mental health, I am angry that we think 60k dying from cars and guns....is the status quo.....nope we need to focus and work for real gun and vehicle reform which can stop even a mentally ill driver from driving a vehicle where he is not in compliance with the law.

Yomama wrote:We cannot paint all people with disorders with the same brush. Hell, many of us have had problems and still lead productive lives. Some folks snap and it cannot reliably be predicted which ones will go off the deep end. Armchair quarterbacks point fingers and reporters insinuate failures in the system, but we do not live in a perfect world.

We cannot go back to the days of shipping people off to an asylum, ala One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, every time someone is determined to be deviate from the norm. Society cannot afford to pay for it and it is cruel to the borderline patients that can cope on the "outside".

Let's face reality... manic-depressives will go off their Lithium, patients in court-supervised programs will slip through the cracks, and people will continue to make human mistakes and misjudge the severity of another person's mental status.

Not much of a silver lining to the Newtown murders, but I hope that gun owners will take action to deny access to unstable family members. This kid was obviously troubled and his mother should have had a foolproof system to deny him access to her guns.

bghlaw0371 wrote:Good post

bghlaw0371 wrote:

Yomama wrote:We cannot paint all people with disorders with the same brush. Hell, many of us have had problems and still lead productive lives. Some folks snap and it cannot reliably be predicted which ones will go off the deep end. Armchair quarterbacks point fingers and reporters insinuate failures in the system, but we do not live in a perfect world.

We cannot go back to the days of shipping people off to an asylum, ala One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, every time someone is determined to be deviate from the norm. Society cannot afford to pay for it and it is cruel to the borderline patients that can cope on the "outside".

Let's face reality... manic-depressives will go off their Lithium, patients in court-supervised programs will slip through the cracks, and people will continue to make human mistakes and misjudge the severity of another person's mental status.

Not much of a silver lining to the Newtown murders, but I hope that gun owners will take action to deny access to unstable family members. This kid was obviously troubled and his mother should have had a foolproof system to deny him access to her guns.

Good post

Joanimaroni wrote:

bghlaw0371 wrote:

Yomama wrote:We cannot paint all people with disorders with the same brush. Hell, many of us have had problems and still lead productive lives. Some folks snap and it cannot reliably be predicted which ones will go off the deep end. Armchair quarterbacks point fingers and reporters insinuate failures in the system, but we do not live in a perfect world.

We cannot go back to the days of shipping people off to an asylum, ala One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, every time someone is determined to be deviate from the norm. Society cannot afford to pay for it and it is cruel to the borderline patients that can cope on the "outside".

Let's face reality... manic-depressives will go off their Lithium, patients in court-supervised programs will slip through the cracks, and people will continue to make human mistakes and misjudge the severity of another person's mental status.

Not much of a silver lining to the Newtown murders, but I hope that gun owners will take action to deny access to unstable family members. This kid was obviously troubled and his mother should have had a foolproof system to deny him access to her guns.

Good post

Good post

My point...parents can not ignore signs and symptoms of a troubled child.

Joanimaroni wrote:Good to see you, Chrissy.*

2seaoat wrote:My point...parents can not ignore signs and symptoms of a troubled child.

In my experience it takes training to go beyond the concept of ignoring. Rather, than parental ignoring, I think there is parental rationalization and lack of training. A parent often lacks the objectivity to make that call, and it becomes increasingly difficult for adult children with problems to have any true parental interface.

I received frantic calls from a friend that her adult son who was married and had an infant son was going to kill himself. I made a strong recommendation to go to an assistant states attorney and have her son involuntarily commited on the mental health call. The son was smart....he agreed to a 7 day voluntary evaluation at a private facility. His insurance only covered the first 7 days of his stay, and the son wanted to leave, and a therapist met the concerned mother and said that her son should never be released in his condition. The doctor released the son.....some could argue that doctor and patient had connected and the son would diligently follow his out patient treatment.....others might suggest the insurance had run out.

The son got in his car which he voluntarily drove to the mental health facility, and he proceeded to drive home to his wife and child. They estimated he was going over a 100mph when he hit the tree 25 yards off the road.....so please go easy on blaming parents of adult children with mental illness.....I have seen too much pain.....I have felt too much guilt for not insisting on involuntary commitals.....in the end as a society we all need more training and ability to identify when a person is a risk to themselves and to others.......but this idea that we are going to magically ordain expertise on parents of adult children, or that the criminal justice system every day is not interfacing with mentally ill folks is a fantasy. We need to have the political will to invest more resources in training for law enforcement, first responders, teachers, and medical personnel. Mental health first aid is growing in America, but without the commitment of resources, sadly mental illness will be criminalized, and parents will be alone and the target of blame when their adult children harm others.

Human wrote:Let me try to make a point here, and I make this point from personal experiance.

When Im talking about the morality of people, then my anguish that we shouuld allow the head docs more power wont work. I will explain it this way.

We have a bunch of sorry assed parents who are all too willing to have thier children labeled for a pay check from the Gov. The Gov became overwhelmed and went to the head docs and said, we cant afford this. change the diagnosis labels. So they went and removed aspergers off the list as of this year.

I think there is more they removed, but this one is the only one I am focusing on because it effects me personally and is associated with this case.

Now people who needed a accurate diagnosis in order to get help at the school level, cant. or those accomadations will be removed. All because of people abusing the system once again.

Then on top of it all we all get in a frenzy anytime there is a mass killing. Children are being killed right this minute, they are being molested, abused, sold into sex slavery, gang raped. Gangs are out of control, they are killing poeple every day. What is my point? My point is more power over us will NEVER be the answer.

We must start to do things the hard way again of watching our children and what they see on tv, internet. We must teach them self respect and love for people as human beings. Not facebook freinds.

We ourselves have become morally detached from society as we text message instead of call, because it removes the emotional contact between us. As we talk online and frolic because it removes our personal fears of who we really are.

And who we really are is fragile, sensative human beings who need human contact, love and understanding.

And I am scared to death that the association of this mass murder is going to further alientate not only my son but others like him into thinking they are going to grow up to be murderers. I fear to God that parents with these children pay very close attention to these children,. because autistic children are very sensative and loving beings and they take things and move them inwards.

What we really need for right now is to educate people on this specific enigma.

I'll stop my rant now and go back into hiding.

Peace out.

When Kim Peek was 9 months old, doctors pronounced him so mentally
retarded that he would never walk or talk. One physician suggested he be
institutionalized; another later recommended a lobotomy.