Miles to Go Before I Sleep

[purejuice]

I just wanted to say I am shocked at how little people lay in stores for forty years of old age. It is a serious problem, and not just for us as individuals

Comments

[villagecharm]

We should have let Roosevelt smash the court when we had the chance. Now nine magical priests get to determine the laws for 300 million people, because of their ability to necromantically communicate with the authors of the Constitution.

Did you read the NY Times Magazine story on the agonies of having a mentally ill 69-year-old father and essentially no infrastructure outside of jail to take care of him? I can't believe that anyone looks at the health care system in this country and says, "That is exactly how things are supposed to work."

[purejuice]

yeah i did. these stories are getting increasingly difficult for me to read. the only way i got thru my own inferno was by strictly not thinking about it.

[villagecharm]

It was chilling, because everything about it reminded me of the situation for people with mental illness in West Virginia. I had assumed a large part of that was lack of resources - depending on how you measure it, West Virginia is the poorest state in the country, but by any measure among the poorest - but to see the exact same situation in New Jersey is incredibly depressing.

[purejuice]

i have been pondering, since a nurse i was working with on clinic defense (sorry) told me about it, that beginning in 1981, saint elizabeth's, the mega public mental health hosp in d.c., home of ezra pound and the reagan assassin, reduced its number of beds from 27,000 to 3,000.
one reason for the plethora of homeless people, one third of whom (according to ancient stats whose source was reliable at the time) are former fulltime mental patients.
it is unconscionable, that with or without resources (per NJ vs. WVA), our most vulnerable citizens are completely not cared for.
i remember your collection of empty victorian asylums.

[villagecharm]

And those asylums were actually an improvement over what came before - which was locking up people with mental illness in jail, sort of like what happens today. Deinstitutionalization was popular with liberals because it was couched as a civil rights issue, and popular with conservatives because it slashed government spending. And some people really are better off as outpatients, as long as they're able to get medication - I don't for a second think the snakepits of the old days are a solution. But there were lots of people who just can't function on their own, and they ended up on the street.

[purejuice]

and as the links to british papers show, nationalized health care is not doing any better a job. resources have nothing to do with it, apparently.

[microbie]

My friend Richard has a mentally ill (I think paranoid schizophrenia) brother, and they all feel relieved but also guilty whenever he winds up in jail. It's the only place where he's forced to take his meds.

[purejuice]

did the piece talk about the civil libertarians/foucauldians/aclu role in this? you can be free not to take your meds, but if so, you must be under care.

[microbie]

Not really. The article made it seem like libertarians are perfectly happy to have murders by psychotics as the price for not being forced into hospitalization or supervision.

[purejuice]

i just read it and this is a fair characterization.

[auntysocial]

I've been thinking about this since I learned that E. Torrey Fuller, who advocates forced medication, wrote a book about the land of my ancestors. Earlier in life, I was exposed to propaganda from people who said the exact opposite. Earlier anti-psychotic medications had powerful side effects, so much so that some patients said the side effects were really the main effects. They slowed the patients down, but failed to make them functioning members of society. People who are not psychotic can discuss the side effects with their doctors and change or adjust their medication appropriately. I don't know how much this is true about people who have the more disruptive forms of mental illness. Or is it more a question of remembering to take them? That can be hard for anyone! I wish we could have true asylums for the mentally ill, instead of allowing them to wander homeless.

[purejuice]

yes, i know at least one schizophrenic of a certain age who will not take meds, fearing, i think rightly, the side effects of the 60s and 70s style meds. it has cost this person terribly, but the argument was always some kind of engagement and productivity in exchange for weeks and months and years and decades of damage to themselves and others.
i am with you on the true, kind, asylum where maybe you wouldn't have to take the meds and you could be cared for appropriately when you went off, and then have a sheltered workshop job and activities when you were better. i think the rich have such a system, like john travolta's son with the manny. that didn't turn out so well but it's a good idea.

[microbie]

From what I hear from Richard, his brother doesn't remember to take them (or loses them or runs out), although "side" effects may be another issue. The brother is homeless, so I can imagine it's hard to keep track of medications.

[villagecharm]

It's amazing. In the name of making (genuinely needed) improvements, we've reached a place where our policy on mental illness is essentially the same as it was before the 19th century: lock them up.

[purejuice]

doris lessing in The Four Gated City has a rich woman who on frequent occasion has some kind of psychotic break. she doesn't want to take the meds of the day (early 50s) because of how stupid, disengaged and dead they make you feel. she makes the decision to suffer the psychotic breaks bare bodkin, and has the money to have loving companionship and a nice apartment in the basement of the family house in which to go through her breaks. it is an amazingly humane account, based i think of something of the kind in lessing's own life.

[microbie]

Every time I read about prisons, the very poor, or the mentally ill, I think of Shirley Jackson's "The lottery" -- these are the people that contemporary American society have condemned to die so that the rest of us can get on with life.