The over-medication of hospitalized patients resulted, years ago, in an abhorrence for forcing people to be medicated against their will. As someone who has worked in short-term involuntary psych hospital units, I have seen how difficult it is to give meds to someone who doesn't want to take them--it is a legal and bureaucratic nightmare. Someone who is in a floridly psychotic state does not have the ability to make informed consent, but many hearings must be held and hoops jumped through before the Dr's judgement that they need meds can be accepted. The pendulum swung so far in the diretion of patients' rights, that patients sometimes need to be restrained, or in seclusion to keep them from harming themselves or others, when a shot or a pill will return them to a semblance of reality. The pendulum has to swing back to the middle. Freedom is a very elusive concept when you are trying to help, or manage the symptoms of someone who has no internal capacity for self-control.
Your analysis of how end-stage capitalism has fueled the crisis of homelessness is excellent, but there's more to it, that stems from the closing of state mental hospitals during the Reagan administration. Not only were the community resources for medical care and housing never funded as promised. The entire premise was based on the belief that people with chonic, severe mental illness would be willing to voluntarily take medication, and live in situations where they would be required to follow rules of behavior. As a retired psychiatric social worker, I can tell you that this whole model is a fallacy. A huge percentage of the unhoused and also those housed in prison are not willing to take medications to control the symptoms of their illnesss that cause them to be unable to manage their lives, or who often turn to alcohol or street drugs instead. Nor do they want to live anywhere that requires them to take meds, abstain from alcohol or street drugs, or follow basic rules. To solve a big part of the homeless problem, and the reality that our streets and jails have become de facto psychiatric facilities, mostly unmedicated, we need to re-establish state hospitals--hopefully more humane than those of the past. If the laws were changed to make it easier for a court to require a chronic miscreant to take meds, it might be possible for some to live in the community with adequate support services, and if they refuse, they live in the hospital. Some are simply too sick or disorganized to care for themselves and need to be mandated to live in a state facility. It is less cruel to make sure that the chronic, severely mentally ill are adequately housed, fed, clothed --and required to take medication--than it is to allow them to continue to live in bedlam and befoul the streets of our communities, even if that is what they prefer to do.
At its most basic level, even if the funding is there you need the kindly butt-wipers and toenail clippers and people who care the way that that Jewish carpenter cared or all the funding won’t make a difference. When you mentioned the mayor trying to encourage communities to take people in, the reality is that people have to do what you’ve done, invited them in, cared for them and GONE OUT OF YOUR WAY for no other reason than you wanted to, and that’s a big ask, as generous as we like to think we all are. Everyone made fun of that Super Bowl commercial with the feet washing but I thought it was pretty right on no matter who paid for the ad..
You said no one wants to hear this. I do! I love what you have to say.
That photo at the bottom speaks volumes. Other people might feel afraid to walk down that path, and avoid the area. But here are unhoused people, not criminals and mentally ill people. People blame homeless people for all kinds of things. Even the man you quoted on next door assumed that the guy who urinated was due to homelessness.
Kim, if you haven't read this yet, the nonprofit where I was chair worked with the UN to define poverty. Here was the result of their work. It explains who becomes homeless and why, and it has vastly increased my understanding. https://atdfourthworld-usa.org/map-download-the-report
The over-medication of hospitalized patients resulted, years ago, in an abhorrence for forcing people to be medicated against their will. As someone who has worked in short-term involuntary psych hospital units, I have seen how difficult it is to give meds to someone who doesn't want to take them--it is a legal and bureaucratic nightmare. Someone who is in a floridly psychotic state does not have the ability to make informed consent, but many hearings must be held and hoops jumped through before the Dr's judgement that they need meds can be accepted. The pendulum swung so far in the diretion of patients' rights, that patients sometimes need to be restrained, or in seclusion to keep them from harming themselves or others, when a shot or a pill will return them to a semblance of reality. The pendulum has to swing back to the middle. Freedom is a very elusive concept when you are trying to help, or manage the symptoms of someone who has no internal capacity for self-control.
Your analysis of how end-stage capitalism has fueled the crisis of homelessness is excellent, but there's more to it, that stems from the closing of state mental hospitals during the Reagan administration. Not only were the community resources for medical care and housing never funded as promised. The entire premise was based on the belief that people with chonic, severe mental illness would be willing to voluntarily take medication, and live in situations where they would be required to follow rules of behavior. As a retired psychiatric social worker, I can tell you that this whole model is a fallacy. A huge percentage of the unhoused and also those housed in prison are not willing to take medications to control the symptoms of their illnesss that cause them to be unable to manage their lives, or who often turn to alcohol or street drugs instead. Nor do they want to live anywhere that requires them to take meds, abstain from alcohol or street drugs, or follow basic rules. To solve a big part of the homeless problem, and the reality that our streets and jails have become de facto psychiatric facilities, mostly unmedicated, we need to re-establish state hospitals--hopefully more humane than those of the past. If the laws were changed to make it easier for a court to require a chronic miscreant to take meds, it might be possible for some to live in the community with adequate support services, and if they refuse, they live in the hospital. Some are simply too sick or disorganized to care for themselves and need to be mandated to live in a state facility. It is less cruel to make sure that the chronic, severely mentally ill are adequately housed, fed, clothed --and required to take medication--than it is to allow them to continue to live in bedlam and befoul the streets of our communities, even if that is what they prefer to do.
This: https://mlf.org/community-first/
At its most basic level, even if the funding is there you need the kindly butt-wipers and toenail clippers and people who care the way that that Jewish carpenter cared or all the funding won’t make a difference. When you mentioned the mayor trying to encourage communities to take people in, the reality is that people have to do what you’ve done, invited them in, cared for them and GONE OUT OF YOUR WAY for no other reason than you wanted to, and that’s a big ask, as generous as we like to think we all are. Everyone made fun of that Super Bowl commercial with the feet washing but I thought it was pretty right on no matter who paid for the ad..
You said no one wants to hear this. I do! I love what you have to say.
That photo at the bottom speaks volumes. Other people might feel afraid to walk down that path, and avoid the area. But here are unhoused people, not criminals and mentally ill people. People blame homeless people for all kinds of things. Even the man you quoted on next door assumed that the guy who urinated was due to homelessness.
Kim, if you haven't read this yet, the nonprofit where I was chair worked with the UN to define poverty. Here was the result of their work. It explains who becomes homeless and why, and it has vastly increased my understanding. https://atdfourthworld-usa.org/map-download-the-report
Re Proposition 1, yes it is good, but it also forces people into programs, which is not cool. See https://www.aclunc.org/blog/don-t-be-fooled-proposition-1-s-false-promises