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It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:03:18 AM

WyrdRich

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       I didn't want to hijack the thread about dealing with mentally ill family members, but some comments were made in there that shouldn't go unchallenged.

       Once upon a time, it was relatively easy to get a family member committed and shipped off somewhere. Out of sight, out of mind (not intended, but hey, if the pun works...). It wasn't a good solution. People were robbed of their most basic rights as humans. It was wrong. Somebody wrote a book about it, a movie was made and awareness grew until society made a change. It was a victory for the sort of values I once thought were liberal.

     There are all sorts of people wandering our streets. Some of the homeless have simply chosen that life. Some will bootstrap themselves out of it, others will become some sort of wards of the state as the result of things they do, and some will be out there for the rest of their lives. No matter how miserable their condition, I tell myself that at least they are free individuals. I look at my brother and sometimes I don't know him. His mind is still brilliant (he was a state champion in chess as well as football) but it moves in strange ways. He can't be reasoned with when it comes to treatment. Whether he wakes up in the morning or watches the sunrise after being up all night, he gets to decide what he will do that day. His mind is his own.

      Changing the laws about institutionalizing the non-violent mentally ill was the right thing to do. The price was having them out for the world to see. Reagan didn't create the homeless, Liberals and Hollywood did. Better to rewrite history though, rather than admit they never considered the consequences.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:15:23 AM

juliaoceania

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The motivation behind putting the mentally ill in the streets was save tax money, not allow them more freedom. If your brother had ever wandered into your son's 5th birthday party with no connection to reality, walked miles without no shoes until the soles of his feet were raw and bloody, you may feel differently. I cannot tell you how hard it was to call the police that day to have him institutionalized... they kept him 72 hours. He then went to jail for trying to steal a cop car, they locked him up, he was in the same delusional state and would not have harmed anyone, he thought he was helping the cop.

You know, I think it is criminal that we do not stabilize people who are delusional for a time until they can rationally choose treatment for themselves. This is not freedom, anyone that has volunteered for a homeless shelter (raises hand) knows how much freedom those in homeless shelters have. The mentally ill are victimized on the streets, and then they are locked up in jail when they disturb our peace... if you call that freedom I do not know what to say.

_____________________________

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:16:16 AM

Deshryan

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What you say is very true, to a point. I work with with the mentaly ill as well as being married to one. There are those who, with the right medication and help can live a productive life, but there are others who not matter what can not survive in the outside world, wether on the streets of being taken care of by family. I have one resident who is so delusinal that demons are always eating her soul, eggs, breasts or flesh. This resident also feels that all men are out to get them so that they can drink her blood and impregnate her. She could not survive on the streets. While I feel that the metally ill do have certain rights and should not be imprisoned out of hand, some do need to be place under supervision.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:18:44 AM

Deshryan

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Our taxes are still paying for them, in RCFs, nursing homes, Medi Caide and Medi Care. They get SSI and Disability. Don't fool yourself.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:22:22 AM

juliaoceania

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quote:

While I feel that the metally ill do have certain rights and should not be imprisoned out of hand, some do need to be place under supervision.

I absolutely agree with that, I had a neighbor with 2 kids that was schitzophrenic and functional. My best friend has a brother with schitzophrenia that lives on his own, has a girlfriend, and holds a job with minimal supervision... that is the gains we have made with helping people with mental illness. My brother is completely functional today, has a wife and a job... so it is possible to treat people and stablize them, but because family cannot intervene to help their loved ones it is a constant fight to make sure they do not fall through the cracks... a fight I know only too well.

_____________________________

Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:24:22 AM

Deshryan

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Working with them has shown me that all it takes is compassion and understanding.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:25:39 AM

juliaoceania

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Deshryan

Our taxes are still paying for them, in RCFs, nursing homes, Medi Caide and Medi Care. They get SSI and Disability. Don't fool yourself.

http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

_____________________________

Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:28:36 AM

Sinergy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: WyrdRich

Reagan didn't create the homeless

I can agree with this in a sense. Reagan simply enforced laws passed by Congress and attempted to right a problem with people who were unjustly committed to insane asylums by their family or friends. Of course, taking somebody institutionalized at the age of 12, kept on medication for the next 20 years in the Looney Bin, and then kicking them out on the streets where they lacked skills for basic survival might not have been the best approach to fixing the problem.

As was pointed out, the only difference between them being institutionalized or being homeless is whose pocket the money to pay for them comes out of.

This sort of thing seems to happen a lot. A system is set up. It gets abused. It gets reformed. The reformed system gets abused. It gets reformed again. It gets abused again. And so on, and so forth.

Perhaps the problem are the people who set out with the one goal in mind being to abuse the system?

quote:

Liberals and Hollywood did.

This seems like an idiotic statement to me. I suspect it is an ignorant and biased opinion derived from confirmation bias and source material including Rush Limbaugh or Faux News. For the sake of argument, I would love to read any actual source material you might have on the subject to support this opinion.

Sinergy

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:33:49 AM

Deshryan

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I know what that report says, but I also know who pays the bills at the RCF I work at and it is all that I listed. We are funded by federal and state aid. The funds that were cut deal with those who are in the real world. I made three bucks more then the allowance and my husband lost his food stamps and now has a $180 spend down that we have to pay for his medical care.

< Message edited by Deshryan -- 12/9/2006 9:41:23 AM >

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:41:29 AM

juliaoceania

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Reagan did this first when he was governor of California, it was one of the reasons why my mom voted for him his first term but refused to support him a second term. She is old enough to remember this issue all too well and that is the only reason I know about it. I googled his record in California and came up with this link originally published in the SF Chronicle

quote:

Prisons and jails have become, in effect, California's hospitals of last resort for the mentally ill. An estimated 30,000 mentally ill people are behind bars at any given time. Each night a person spends in jail costs taxpayers three times the dollars needed to treat a patient with medication in a residential care facility.
How did it get to be this way?
The short answer is 'deinstitutionalization.' During the 1960s, many people began accusing the state mental hospitals of violating the civil rights of patients. Some families did, of course, commit incorrigible teenagers or eccentric relatives to years of involuntary confinement and unspeakable treatment. Nurse Ratched, the sadistic nurse famously portrayed in the book and film 'One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest,' became a symbol of institutional indifference to the mentally ill.
By the late 1960s, the idea that the mentally ill were not so different from the rest of us, or perhaps were even a little bit more sane, became trendy. Reformers dreamed of taking the mentally ill out of the large institutions and housing them in smaller, community-based residences where they could live more productive and fulfilling lives.
In 1967, Gov. Ronald Reagan signed the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act (LPS), which went into effect in 1969 and quickly became a national model. Among other things, it prohibited forced medication or extended hospital stays without a judicial hearing.
A mental patient could be held for 72 hours only if he or she engaged in an act of serious violence or demonstrated a likelihood of suicide or an inability to provide their own food, shelter or clothing due to mental illness. But 72 hours was rarely enough time to stabilize someone with medication. Only in extreme cases could someone be held another two weeks for evaluation and treatment.
As a practical matter, involuntary commitment was no longer a plausible option.

http://www.psychlaws.org/generalResources/article45.htm

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:45:13 AM

Deshryan

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That's CA, I know for a fact that MO, KS, OK, IL, TX, and CO are not like that. What about all the jobs that Clinton lost in this country and the homeless he created?

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:50:16 AM

juliaoceania

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Deshryan

That's CA, I know for a fact that MO, KS, OK, IL, TX, and CO are not like that. What about all the jobs that Clinton lost in this country and the homeless he created?

Would you show me a nationally recognized publication or academic that claims that clinton lost us jobs?

BTW, I cannot stand NAFTA, I have no love for Clinton, and I am not a democrat, so making this about Clinton versus Reagan will not work for me.

I am interested in if you believe that NAFTA caused the steady stream of jobs that have left this country and blame clinton for that, because that was proposed first under Dubya's father and Dubya has been trying to further free trade with that abomination CAFTA.

Just saying, us getting screwed is a bipartisan thing

_____________________________

Once you label me, you negate me ~ Soren Kierkegaard

Reality has a well known Liberal Bias ~ Stephen Colbert

Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people. Eleanor Roosevelt

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Post #: 12

RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:53:30 AM

Sinergy

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Hello A/all,

My reading of the link you provided, julia, shows that Reagan signed a bill passed by the California state legislature.

This does not mean he made the bill into law. Had it not been mandated by our legislative branch, the executive branch would have had no say in the matter.

Just me, etc.

Sinergy

_____________________________

"There is a fine line between clever and stupid"
David St. Hubbins "This Is Spinal Tap"

"Every so often you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You cant do that, it is gone, gone forever." J. Danforth Quayle

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:53:39 AM

Lordandmaster

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Why stop there?

Liberals are responsible for global warming, too. And for the war in Iraq. And for AIDS.

And it's actually a proven but little-known fact that liberals created all those bad hairstyles back in the 70's.

quote:

ORIGINAL: WyrdRich

Reagan didn't create the homeless, Liberals and Hollywood did.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:58:12 AM

Level

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Buncha commies..... http://www.abc.net.au/newcastle/stories/m964205.jpg

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:58:35 AM

Deshryan

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Not NAFTA, but with the base closeing around the country. When Clinton closed Fort Riley KS and moved the Big Red 1 to Germany 1500 silvians lost their jobs. It was loke that all over the US.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 9:58:38 AM

Sinergy

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Lordandmaster

And it's actually a proven but little-known fact that liberals created all those bad hairstyles back in the 70's.

I cant believe that you think Flock of Seagulls hair is a "bad haircut."

Sinergy

_____________________________

"There is a fine line between clever and stupid"
David St. Hubbins "This Is Spinal Tap"

"Every so often you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You cant do that, it is gone, gone forever." J. Danforth Quayle

(in reply to Lordandmaster)

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 10:02:11 AM

Deshryan

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Well if you are going that route, then they are also responsible for 9-11. Just ask Oral Roberts. cause that's what he said after 9-11 happen. Gays, lesbians, liberals, and pagans.

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Do as Ye will, Least Ye Harm None. The Wiccan Reede

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 10:10:02 AM

meatcleaver

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I think it was Foucault who got the whole ball rolling about caring for the mentally ill in the community and not in institutions. I guess he could be called a liberal of sorts or maybe more accurately a libertarian, some might even say he is a conservative, it really doesn't matter. The problem with care in the community is that it is the Rolls Royce option, to do it properly it costs a lot more than keeping people in institutions. Politicians appear to have seen care in the community as a quick fix, closing down ageing institutions that rightfully have no place in the modern world but also as a way of cutting costs, when costs should have been increased. I guess politicians are just responding to the public who forever complain about paying taxes and expect everything to be done and still cut taxes. Institutions are better than so called care in the community where there is no care, no support and no community. A properly funded care in the community is by far and away the best and most humane humane option. It just depends on people wanting to pay for it rather than say they want it and refuse the politicians the necessary tax to fund it.

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RE: It's Reagan's Fault!!! - 12/9/2006 10:16:07 AM

WyrdRich

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quote:

ORIGINAL: Sinergy

For the sake of argument, I would love to read any actual source material you might have on the subject to support this opinion.

Sinergy

That would be a bit tricky Sinergy, since I grew up in an activist household and formed my opinions based on dinner table discussions. The Christmas shopping is far from complete and we'll be having a pitcher or two of margaritas while we decorate the tree. I'm not going to spend the day using my dial-up to research what the guests on talk-shows were bringing to the publics attention in 1977. Go rent "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" if you don't believe Hollywood played a major role (fantastic movie if you haven't seen it, lots of great actors and it was filmed in a real state hospital).

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