Asylums

Quicksearch

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Saturday, October 12. 2019

Everybody knows that most of "homelessness" is about dysfunctional people rather than lack of a roof. Given the complexity of humans, and the complexity of modern society, it's remarkable how few there are.

The great reformer Dorothea Dix recognized the need for "humane asylums" for the mentally ill and incapacitated. By the 1970s, the "miracle drugs" were supposed to treat serious mental illnesses. JFK led a movement towards "deinstutionalization". You all know this.

As things turned out, we found excellent treatments for bipolar ailments but really only symptomatic treatments for the Schizophrenic spectrum of low-functional, marginally-functional, and non-functional people. (Addicts are highly-treatable, but addicts do not always want that and it's a free country.)

So, for the chronically mentally ill (mostly Schizophrenic variants who might be as much as 1% of the population), there is either family support, street life, or asylum of some form. "Asylum" should not be a dirty word. It should be a beautiful word, and asylums can be good places. But nobody is building them or coming up with creative ideas about it.

How The Loss Of U.S. Psychiatric Hospitals Led To A Mental Health Crisis

Posted by Dr. Joy Bliss in Psychology, and Dr. Bliss at 15:54 | Comments (13) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

They would be expensive. Our legal system is now firmly in the direction that you can't be locked up unless you are dangerous. Most of the homeless are only passively dangerous due to the irresponsibility of leaving stuff around or being in the way and an annoyance. Very hard to prove in court that camping on the sidewalk is dangerous. You can lock them up for that as a crime, I suppose.

The rise in jail population mirrors the decrease in hospital population. But even jail is expensive.

My hospital treats the emergency cases (plus some murderers who wait long for release) and send most of them back to life outside in homes or apartments, some with jobs, friends, and general independence. I don't think we really want to take that away.

Community treatment laws with real enforcement would do much more.

#1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-10-12 16:07 (Reply)

We wouldn't treat our children like this. What the homeless need is first an assessment of their problem, i.e. alcoholism, drugs, mental illness, low IQ, bad luck... Then the appropriate treatment. Followed by a probationary period where they are provided work and other necessities in a tough love kind of environment where failure is not an option.

Set up a federal/state program of cost sharing and some serious monitoring of the programs to prevent waste and fraud. Combine this with an active effort to find and deport anyone in the country illegally and this would provide the jobs and some of the funding. Put America and Americans first.

#2 OneGuy on 2019-10-12 16:11 (Reply)

Asylums and reform schools both served a useful purpose but are not politically correct in this day. They were far more humane than anything we have working today and they saved lives. For some they provided a new beginning...a chance to start over.

#3 indyjonesouthere on 2019-10-12 18:29 (Reply)

Orphanages, as well.

#3.1 sixtyville on 2019-10-13 01:24 (Reply)

You forget what the "asylums" were, what the conditions for the inmates (and yes, that's what they were) were.
That the inmates were regularly tortured at the whim of the staff, waterboarding, electrocution, deliberate exposure to extremes of heat and cold, had high quantities of halucinatory agents forced into their bodies.

Had the "asylums" been prisons Amnesty International and other human rights organisations would rightfully have been up in arms about it.

THAT's why they were closed.

#4 JTW on 2019-10-12 20:25 (Reply)

I worked in one in the 1970s and with staff who had been there since the 1930s - I also had to take histories and read the older records. Neglect was common, abuse did happen, especially to difficult patients. But torture, electrocution, waterboarding, deliberate exposure to temperature, and hallucinatory agents - those were rare, if they occurred at all. I don't know what your sources are, but you should be suspicious of them henceforth.

You seem to be describing ECTs as electrocution, continuous baths as waterboarding, and psychiatric medications as hallucinatory agents. None of that is true. Asylums were bad places to be, but they weren't that. Many patients like them better than the ostracism and abuse they faced in their home towns.

@One Guy - how are you going to make them follow through with your program? I can tell in moments what is up with a troubled person, and so can most police, ER workers, MH outreach workers, and shelter staff. But any mechanism to force treatment against someone's will is going to have a boatload of false positives, of people being made to comply who would not have been more than an annoyance if left alone.

#4.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-10-12 20:45 (Reply)

You are correct that it won't be easy. But public intoxication and it's associated problems is illegal. Strengthen and enforce the laws. In court give them a choice; jail or treatment followed by probation. Ditto for drug users. The mentally ill are more problematic. But again when they break the law arrest them and bring them to trial and give them the choice of treatment or jail. Again include probation and if they go off their meds repeat the process. The alternative is what we now have and that includes 70,000 deaths from overdoses.

#4.1.1 OneGuy on 2019-10-12 23:16 (Reply)

Increasingly there are what are called "mental health courts" and "drug courts" that do exactly that. Anytime you get the ear of someone in your state or county who maight have some influence in that, those are the words to drop on them.

By the time a judge sees a person appear before them, it may no longer be apparent how they looked as the police became involved. It can get complicated, and you have to rely on competing experts. I can tell you who knows what they are talking about and who doesn't, but when people have credentials it's not always easy to tell.

#4.1.1.1 Assistant Village Idiot on 2019-10-13 13:35 (Reply)

I had an Aunt diagnosed as a schizophrenic in her 20's and she remained institutionalized her entire life. She always recognized my mother but refused to recognize her young daughter as she grew to adulthood. She suffered none of the tribulations to which you refer. Far better she be safeguarded in that institution rather than life on the street.

#4.2 indyjonesouthere on 2019-10-12 20:47 (Reply)

I recently toured the grounds of the old Fairfield Hills State Hospital in Newtown, CT.

It was a city unto itself. Its own power plant, a sveral hundred acre campus, housing for staff and doctors, many buildings and around 4000 patients. Closed down in the mid-90s. A few buildings put to new uses, including a brewery and the Newtown Town Hall.

#5 Bird Dog on 2019-10-13 06:44 (Reply)

Goffman's Asylums is probably responsible for closing mental institutions. He found that in totalizing institutions that nobody was doing what his position said he should be doing.

His point though was using a totalizing institution to study social accommodations that turned up, with an eye towards generalzing it to society at large; not singling out the institutions as an exception to the rule. Just a place where it's easier to study.

Great book. Erving Goffman worked by irony.

#6 rhhardin on 2019-10-13 07:27 (Reply)

The San Francisco Chronicle is quick to point out that the hospitals were closed by Ronal Reagan and this has led to the destruction of San Francisco. If memory serves me well the hospitals were closed because of the abusive nature of the organizational structures and staffs. In those days MOST inmates were truly better off on the streets in the hope that non-profit groups would step up with the necessary services--that did not happen. I seem to also remember that the wonderful hippie generation--those who demanded access to the drugs of THEIR choice--were also the airheads who demanded the closure of these hospitals, because at that time some judges were committing "drug offenders" to these hospitals to be cured of their addiction. It seems ironic now that these decisions have destroyed "the city by the bay". HOWEVER, it has been close to 42 years (summer of love 1967) of experimentation--where is that generation of liberating geniuses now? Oh, I remember: they came, they tore down, and now they have retired. Too bad, no one seems to be working on dealing with today's reality--only politically popular fund raising ideologies for that next population--those "agents of change", who swarmed out of college with useless degrees and the absolute certainty that they would make a better world. Sheesh two generations of self serving insanity and it's a wonder we are not in worse shape!!

#7 Another one on 2019-10-13 12:48 (Reply)

The hospitals were closed by the ACLU.

#7.1 OneGuy on 2019-10-13 16:19 (Reply)

Add Comment

Name
Email	(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications. Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u], [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: BBCode format allowed
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Maggie's Farm

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Saturday, October 12. 2019

Asylums