Would a WOR!d without mental hospitals be better?

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fifasy
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19 Oct 2017, 2:06 pm

Do you think it would be better if instead of mental hospitals there was a form of intensive support that could be offered in a persons own home?

Traditionally mental! Hospitals were far more restrictive than today, people got locked up and the key was throwaway. And they didn't get good outcomes, and it was expensive. Today I don't see anyone benefiting from going in mental hospitals, what they are given there maybe, but the coercion, being forced to be somewhere is often traumatic and people never get over it.

Also millions of people avoid asking for help with their mental health precisely because they fear being locked in a mental hospital. So arguably they help create a situation where it is hard to end stigma against mental health. There are so many children out there growing up with mentally ill parents (like my dad was) who won't get help because they fear being contained. And my childhood was difficult having an emotional wreck of a father but I cannot blame him too much, the system failed him.

I am sure it is possible to provide intensive several a time seaweed visits to peoples homes during a week who are in real need of mental health care. Involving psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists, whatever is necessary. And if said people signed a contract with the person needing help promising not to contain them in a mental hospital I think it would bring more people forward to seek mental health care.

That is my vision for the future. In my opinion a society that ignore these issues is foolish because when you get mass shootings with guns, when wars break out for trivial reasons, when crime wave a occur, often somehow mental health is a big part of the problem.



BTDT
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19 Oct 2017, 2:14 pm

They closed many of the Psychiatric Hospitals in the US. Nowadays many of the people who would have been institutionalized are now either on the street or in jails.



fifasy
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19 Oct 2017, 2:23 pm

BTDT wrote:
They closed many of the Psychiatric Hospitals in the US. Nowadays many of the people who would have been institutionalized are now either on the street or in jails.


Probably if those people have been given housing in the past they were not offered enough intensive support in their home to help them live in the community.



Embla
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19 Oct 2017, 3:04 pm

I'm not so sure.. I definitely think the world needs BETTER mental hospitals, but none at all, I don't know. Realistically, it would never work, because of all the people that need 24 hour care. No state would ever be willing to pay so much for housing, assistance, doctors etc. for so many people. And even if they tried it, that would probably lead to even worse situations, with patients being forgotten about and mistreated all over the place, without anyone knowing about it.
In a utopia, where patients could receive really good care, all day round, in their own homes, I'm still not so sure it would be the best for everyone. It would absolutely be a fantastic solution for many, probably most. But I also know that a lot of people in mental hospitals lack social connections outside of the hospital. When I was hospitalized, I talked to a lady who was about to be sent home, and she was so worried and didn't want to leave. Not because she still needed the care she got at the hospital, but because the nurses and other patients were the only people she knew. They had become her family, and outside of the hospital she would be completely alone. So, the problem that would occur would likely be loneliness amongst the patients. It would be really great if more people could get in-home care, but I think you should be able to choose between that and an institution. I'm pretty sure a good amount of patents would choose the latter.



Sweetleaf
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19 Oct 2017, 4:26 pm

A lot of mentally ill people don't have a home to be visited in because they are homeless. Or they may be in a living situation where they live with people who exacerbate their problems or just can't provide a good environment for the mentally ill person. For some getting out of their home environment is better.


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bunnyb
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19 Oct 2017, 4:54 pm

The old name for a Mental Hospital was Asylum which means a safe place. It's sad that they never lived up to their name but I do believe there is a need for safe places. They shut down the mental Institutions in my country saying care in the community is better. It isn't. Far too many people end up homeless with no support of any sort. At least in the Institutions they got a bed, bathroom facilities and three meals a day. I'm not saying the Institutions were great, but throwing out the idea of providing safe places is stupid. The government agenda wasn't about care. The Institutions were all on valuable land. The government sold the sites off to developers. It always come to down to who and how money can be made and mentally ill people do not make money for anyone.


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Last edited by bunnyb on 19 Oct 2017, 5:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.

fifasy
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19 Oct 2017, 5:23 pm

I have severe anxiety and have never felt well enough to work. I have been in 2 mental hospitals and 2 psychiatric wards in more general hospitals.

I never felt safe or healthy in any of them. I have OCD and toilets and bathrooms were left filthy. Wherever I was held some members of staff were predatory or scary. I was sexually harassed by a fellow gay patient.

At least in my own experience I cannot be nostalgic for the closure of mental hospitals. I hate that people are on the streets but I lay the blame there on a lack of cleverly designed housing. It would be possible to build apartments with an on sight health team who could visit residents every day, if that level of support is needed. All residents in the apartments could be mentally I'll, if that level of segregation is needed. But you could still have open gates and no coercion so that people can still have freedom.

Freedom is a basic tenet of civilised society. Except where people are a serious violent danger to others it isn't right to lock people up.