Maggie's Farm

Mental Illness and psychiatric beds...
This NPR article has so many apples and oranges. Private hospital and state hospital beds and care are not the same thing at all. We deal with much sicker and more violent patients, with worse insurance or none. We are grateful for any pressure the private hospitals can take off us. Emergency rooms and correctional facilities do indeed have a lot of patients who would be better served by us at the state facilities, but beds are scant, and the laws governing who gets in are not always sensible.

There is plenty of blame to go around. Though observing liberals trying to fix things was indeed one of my great motives for leaving liberalism, conservatives and libertarians are greatly at fault as well. (Short version: conservatives say "we have no idea what we're talking about, but we're sure you're spending way too much." Libertarians "Yeah, you guys just want to lock up and force treatment on merely eccentric people, so we are going to make the laws crazy restrictive on what you can do.")

The discussion about what we did in the 60's and 70's is no longer relevant. We cannot in any way go back and redo this. We now have effective treatments, many with bad side effects; patients now are also much more likely substance-abusing, because the level of misery is so high that short-term solutions that are long-term nightmares look very attractive. Most of you cannot imagine the level of misery they face daily.

The phrase that you might have missed in the NPR article is the reference to a diagnosed mental illness and mass violence. Hidden in that advocate's comment is the knowledge that a lot of these shooters, bombers, arsonists have a diagnosable mental illness, yet have not come to professional attention before. There is a connection between mental illness and violence. However, there is far more of a connection of them being victims of violence.