My apartment neighbor threatened to shoot me earlier today

Post Reply New Topic

Looks like after the issue of patient abuse has been raised, the applied solution was to... leave the patients to fend for themselves?

I wonder how it relates to the homelessness crisis

But somehow, the infamous Judge Rotenberg Center still exists. Looks like Americans are not considering more modern approach to psychiatric hospitals.

You know, I'm not talking about some revolutionary experimental concepts, just things that are considered normal where I live.

Right now I'm feeling somewhat cynical and I'm going to say that a certain percentage of the 'why not' could be described as, "We'z 'Mericans and we ain't gonna do wat them furrinerz do!"

Ya know, I'm starting to think that the only rational explanation for the way this thing is going is that I've stumbled in to a live action Twilight Zone episode.

BINGO!

Magz, my country/culture/society has issues when it comes to the psychiatric part of life, and it is self-contradictory in several ways.

And without changing an entire continent worth of people at the heart and soul level I don't know if the thing CAN be fixed.

On the one hand our culture kind of wants to ignore, to sweep under the rug, to wall off, the psychiatric part of life While At The Same Time spending billions and billions of dollars on psych drugs, psychiatry and psychology.
I don't get their behavior, I really don't get it.

And this culture doesn't want to deal with the homeless crisis either.

Among other elements of the homeless crisis:
In My Town a few weeks ago, homeless squatters in a century-old building downtown succeded in burning down 2 buildings and destroying a business in one of them.
Homeless are responsible for a fire which this week burned down a historic fruit-packing building in California.

But until the homeless start burning down Starbucks, Walmart, and Netflix, en masse, our culture isn't going to get one damn thing done about the problem - because it isn't in-their-face all day every day.

That brings to mind the history of the American approach,
here from Harvard is what seems to be a good article about that;
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/ ... ric-drugs/

Let me be clear: it's far from perfect where I live... but not nearly as bad as you describe.
Somehow, in my city, homelessness was reduced to managable level during the time I remember - I think that's been an enormous effort of both governments and non-profit organisations to get where we are now.
I have an ex-junkie friend who gave me an insight into rehab programs here, very much focused on... giving people hope and experience of achievement.

If things were perfect, there wouldn't have been my misdiagnosis, mismedications and suicides in my family... but as things are, at least someone who has just assaulted their neighbour wouldn't be sitting in their apartament with the authorities doing exactly nothing.

Sigh.

In this country, the advocates for people with mental health issues have so far successfully legislated for the rights of the mentally ill to supersede the rights of everyone else, yet those same advocates rarely, if ever, seem to get personally involved in supporting and improving the lives of the mentally ill.  This seems to stem from the idea that (for example) an individual who hears disembodied voices telling him that someone else's home belongs to him, and that the legitimate owners are trespassing on his property and should be driven off by burning down the house still has the right to decide whether or not to take prescribed medications that would silence the voices and make him less violent.

Also, while anyone can technically sign a document that would commit anyone to psychiatric care, that document must be so carefully worded as to neither stigmatize nor traumatize the individual being committed.  Even then, there is a time limit on the commitment, and the person signing the paperwork may be held liable for the costs of treatment.

The laws in this country are so skewed toward the rights of the mentally ill, that most of them cannot even be touched by the law until they murder someone, and many are left to wander the streets as homeless individuals.

EXACTLY!! !

and yet some of those same mental health advocate people will absolutely scourge the pro-lifers with "How many unwanted babies have YOU adopted?"

Sociopolitical activism is so fully of hypocrites on both sides I was giving up on it even before my health crashed, again, and forced me to abandon all causes of all sides.

I stopped getting involved in other people's causes when I found out advocates for those causes only perceived me as either The Hidden Enemy, a financial resource, or both.

Oh dear. Am sorry that y'all had to go through that.
I can somewhat relate from my own experiences.
A few, I was misdiagnosed bipolar from 1980s to early 2000s until a paid professional went, "You aren't bipolar and have never been bipolar, you are autistic, here's why ..."
THANK YOU!
I had had a series of bad to really bad experiences while on meds for bipolar, even a couple which led to encounters with the police.
But I continued taking the meds because that made me look like I was doing my part and family, society, the law, would only help me if I did my part.

After getting the autism diagnosis I continued the bipolar meds for a year or so saying, "It's not broke so let's not fix it" While Knowing Full Well That It Was Very Broken!
I was so fearful of getting disapproval from all of the above but wasn't about to tell them that.
Their answer to the problems I was having was, this obviously requires more meds.

Finally there came a time when the 2 Rx for the bipolar meds of the time were running out & I had hit the point of having enough.
I let them run out.
And stopped the meds.
Cold turkey.
Exactly the thing all the advice says OMG!! ! DON'T DO THAT, THE CONSEQUENCES WILL BE HORRIBLE!! !

And you know what happened ...

very little other than ...

during the next several months my mood/emotions stabilized & life became a lot easier to cope with.

Wait!

What?

IMPOSSIBLE!

HERESY!

APOSTASY!

Yeah, yeah, whatever.

Hmm, imagine that, the psych meds were causing exactly the problems they were supposed to fix.
And the more they gave me to fix the problems the worse the problems became.

Hey, you in the Armani suit with all the degrees on your wall, does "cause and effect" mean anything to you or are you too smart to see that?

And, yes, I do wonder some if my neighbor might be having the same thing ... however ... I didn't shoot anyone, even with a nailgun.

and the other, my Dad was hospitalized for being suicidal in the 1980s while military doctors in Virginia were trying to figure out why his body had pretty much gone on strike.
He turned out to be the Navy's first medical retirement with fibromyalgia and ME/CFS.
And neuropathy and half a dozen other things.

About 20 years later the neuropathy I had long had, and fibro, and ME/CFS, and about half a dozen other things which were different from Dad's half a dozen other things ended my working days.

fortunately, I didn't go through the suicidal thing like he did.

But that he did is no surprise, a successful, decorated, senior Navy officer, suddenly has a body which simply will not do his will, and there Is No Reason!
Fortunately they eventually did discern reasons after several years of intense investigation.
Dad turns 81 this year.

And speaking of Veterans and suicide, a couple years ago George, a Vietnam vet in our model train club decided that was his choice of death instead of waiting for increasingly debilitating disease to waste him away.
There was no talking him out of it.
I wanted to try but he was clearly enough set on his course of action that I decided there was no point in it.
Others tried.
I don't know his wife's attitude about the thing.

I am not understanding why, when someone uses a weapon against someone or
uses something/anything AS a weapon against someone, the attacker is not in custody.
And why eviction papers were not processed immediately.
Because:
Any resident that she hurts from that point on can (and undoubtably will) sue the living daylights out of the owners/management of the complex.
Rightfully.

Nobody I've talked to understands why.
I will admit that I've not gone and asked the Police why they are sitting on their incompetent asses.
Seriously,
this thing is like a Twilight Zone episode.

ROFLMFAO!! !

Yeah, let's make my neighbor the poster child for that!



https://thehill.com/changing-america/we ... -voices-on

(this article just crossed my path on Tumblr)

Man, can't they just wrap their minds around the concept that mental illnesses don't have a one-size-fits-all solution?
Of course most mentally ill patients are non-violent and likely to be victims of abuse not perpetrators of crime - but you could as well say that most of New Yorkers are more likely to be victims of crime than criminals, which is, I'm sure, just as true and just as irrelevant to the situation. No one is advocating for jailing all New Yorkers and no sane person is advocating for New York criminals to be left alone.

So why do they act like that with mentally ill people?

I don't know, Magz, I don't know.

Unless it might be part of something you may have already observed from over there - this society is nuts.

About the only thing I know right now at 4am is that it looks like my body has decided that ALL barbecue sauces are now 'off the menu' for me; and, that just as it was from 1980s to early 2000s, beef and my body don't play well together.

Now you made me want barbecue.
Sigh.
Not the gastric distress, just gnawing on ribs.
Sighs again.