Maggie's Farm

It always interests me that in this day and age of "care in the Community", which is to say near non-existent care, and the burden of protecting and caring for the ill person now being primarily on families, friends and loved ones of the mentally ill person, that these articles generally talk as if there were no other people's lives, health, happiness or welfare involved. Loved ones who are beaten, assaulted, threatened, who stay awake watching dangerous psychotic or manic relatives or friends. Whose own welfare matters not a jot to social workers or doctors (unless they are minor children--in which case, said children are ripped from their family and put in foster care because there exists no long term treatment for a dangerously ill parent). We have a barbarous system now. Families have filled the gaps because love rises to the occasion. But the families stagger under the weight.

My point is, there used to be some consideration of the impact on a family of having someone trashing the place, violently assaulting people, or just scaring the bejesus out of the kids talking about Satan coming out of the sideboard.

In addition, in this age of the recovery memoir, we accept as gospel the complaints of former patients about the horrific abridgement of their liberties when they were out of their heads. The person writing is often sadly accurate about cruel "care", but sometimes one must remember they are also paranoid.

In addition, many of the treatments and drugs that finally quell mania or psychosis cause amnesia. I recently learned that an acquaintance repeatedly manic, who maintains that they suffer from "anxiety and depression" (a BS euphemism) has only ever been able to be calmed down by ECT, which leaves them w total amnesia for the wild thoughts and behavior that got them in trouble.

I am totally sympathetic to people suffering from psychotic episodes, but we need to remember the families too. Our mental health care system is a disaster and getting worse. I don't know what could fix it? Money. Money. Money. Hopeless. People hate and fear the mentally ill in America because they deny their own issues.

Before the NHS had such serious money troubles in GB, they used to be able to section people who were truly ill and hospitalize them til they were well. This saved the lives of three people dear to me. We should have this here. But we don't sufficiently value saving the mentally ill enough in this country. Instead we save people from diseases caused by lifestyle choices.. And we pay more attention to drug addicts than to the many, many severely mentally ill people who don't drink or drug.