Jail: The Best Treatment for Mental Illness? (opinion; excerpted)
Source: Google News
Some people are truly helpless. America’s mentally ill have been placed on the streets, often ill prepared or not being provided the medical care they need. This started during the 1960s when the state-operated hospitals for the mentally ill fell under fire for their poor management. Organizations…exacerbated the problem by pushing for deinstitutionalization. A lack of affordable housing, particularly the disappearance of single-residence occupancy housing, helped to exacerbate the problem. Turning the mentally ill out of the institutions brought about results that proved to be as disappointing as when they were in mismanaged institutions.
The result is that many mentally ill are homeless, wandering the streets, sometimes even posing a danger to the community, because their illness is untreated. It’s quite likely you have seen an unkempt person acting belligerently, even threateningly, behaving in a manner as no rational person ever would dream of behaving. That person is mentally ill and the likelihood is that he has fallen through the cracks of our system particularly if he has no family or comes from one without the means to pay for expensive treatments.
However, there is a new de facto hospital for the mentally ill: America’s prison system. The mentally ill, left to fend for themselves, often end up running afoul of law enforcement because of their aggressive behavior. Some very well may have broken the law but quite often the police do not understand the mentally ill person is displaying symptoms of illness. The police often do not realize that the mentally ill have grandiose feelings and that makes them very difficult to handle, adding to the burden already upon the police.
The problem is that the prisons are no place to house those who truly are mentally ill. [Full text at site.]
Mr. Weyrich also points out that it’s fiscally conservative to provide treatment to the mentally ill and cites an example where Dade County, Florida, saved $2.3 million due to a program to put mentally ill people in treatment instead of jail. He also, it should be noted, does not advocate a blanket return to institutionalization of the mentally ill (although he does correctly note that there’s no alternative for some of the worst situations).
Stop the presses, folks. I’m agreeing wholeheartedly with a conservative here.
Unfortunately, often the line between the unkempt homeless person ranting on the street and a productive, employed citizen is availability and affordability of treatment. The vast majority of mental illnesses – over ninety percent – respond to treatment. Treatment isn’t always a fast process; some readers know that I fought my own mental illness for over a decade before it was completely controlled. But studies and statistics have overwhelmingly shown that it does work.
It should be pointed out that, in the absence of treatment, many mentally ill persons turn to alcohol and drugs in order to manage their symptoms. This “self medication” is not a good idea and leads to problems related to alcoholism and drug abuse. But many people – not all of them homeless – at least feel better under the influence. I’ve not seen any statistics but I do believe that the advent of modern psychiatric treatment will have a positive impact on the statistics involving drug and alcohol abuse.
Which is better for society: a group of people that provide a drain in the forms of crime and non-productivity, or a group of people that can be productive and responsible citizens? The answer is obvious in terms of both social and fiscal issues. In the 1960s, the mentally ill were often locked up and the key thrown away. This is happening again; the only difference is that it’s happening in prisons instead of quasi-medical “institutions.” Why on earth are we as a society permitting this?