dagblog - Comments for "Program Compelling Outpatient Treatment for Mental Illness Is Working, Study Says"

But then if wishes were

artappraiser — Tue, 06 Aug 2013 05:09:29 +0000

In reply to Program Compelling Outpatient Treatment for Mental Illness Is Working, Study Says

But then if wishes were horses, beggars would ride; pie in the sky theorizing, etc. Reality bites:

Brooklyn Hospital Closings a Blow to Psychiatric Care
By NINA BERNSTEIN, New York Times, August 1/2, 2013

[....] the imminent closing of Interfaith Medical Center, a hospital in Bedford-Stuyvesant that is among the largest providers of acute psychiatric care in Brooklyn, is threatening the borough with a severe shortage of inpatient mental health care, other hospital officials said. With the Coney Island Hospital psychiatric emergency department still out of commission after Hurricane Sandy, the loss of the 120 psychiatric beds at Interfaith, which also handles about 67,000 outpatient psychiatric visits a year, is going to create a crisis, hospital officials said. [....]

Maimonides, now widely considered one of the only financially solid private hospitals in Brooklyn, has been operating its psychiatric beds at capacity or above since the storm, which knocked out several of the city’s largest psychiatric hospitals, disrupted outpatient services and flooded scores of coastal nursing homes and adult homes, where many mentally ill people had found housing of last resort.

Though more attention and protest has been focused on the loss of acute-care medical beds and the emergency room at Long Island College Hospital and Interfaith, which together serve more than 250,000 people, the disappearance of Interfaith’s 160 so-called behavioral health beds, including 40 detox and rehabilitation slots, may have more far-reaching repercussions, veterans of the mental health system said.

The state recently announced a plan to downsize its own roster of mental hospitals, to 15 from 24. The state’s Medicaid redesign plan calls for more outpatient services and supportive housing to prevent mental health crises that require hospitalization. But such resources take time and money to create, and are in short supply [....]

I went to a publicly funded

Orion — Wed, 31 Jul 2013 13:10:25 +0000

In reply to Well, what about those in

I went to a publicly funded mental health clinic after my breakdown, arty. While I was there, I had an excellent doctor - who had been in the game for years and years. I literally went in at one point - asked for anti-seizure meds and Klonopin to treat anxiety and he talked me out of the latter, telling me I didn't need it and to just find off the anxiety with a walk since it wasn't really real. He actually looked a little disturbed that I asked for Klonopin at all - he said that it was way over marketted and was equivalent to a street drug.

He was extremely level headed, intelligent and could read between the lines. Juxtaposed with him, I still have access to a private doc who I know would give me anything - literally anything - if I had the right money.

I'm not so sure anymore about the idea you'll be getting "bottom of the barrell" just because it is state funded. That sort of thinking is the result of libertarians and profit motive folks. State institutions would be reliant on tax dollars and would probably end up being given the evil eye way more than these big corporations ever would.

SSRIs are antidepressants - they don't treat psychosis. I don't know anything about antipsychotics. So let's not blur those together. SSRIs are very bad medicine - doctors say they literally don't know how they work and they have all sorts of scary warnings like "homicidal ideation." I think that their existence is actually the result of deregulation - of making medicine way too much of a business instead of a service.

Mental health treatment has become a commercial thing and, thus, is more concerned with having more clients than more cures. This got worse in the 90s, I think, when we got rid of regulations of medication that had already been there. SSRIs like Zoloft, Effexor, etc. don't exist to treat serious mental illness - they exist as the equivalent of snake oil supplements to cure a case of the blues. If people are writing articles like what you have posted, we may bring those regulations back.

Well, what about those in

artappraiser — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 16:42:11 +0000

In reply to I think that if this sort of

Well, what about those in this program who are basically forced to take SSRI's when they'd rather not? We are after all talking about the same psychiatric treatment that we bemoan, and probably more bottom-of-the-barrel than the run-of-the-mill psychiatric practioners at that.

I think that if this sort of

Orion — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 15:28:42 +0000

In reply to Program Compelling Outpatient Treatment for Mental Illness Is Working, Study Says

I think that if this sort of hospitalization existed now, many of these mass shootings wouldn't have occurred. Homelessness would also not exist like it does now. There are alot of social institutions that keep society from going to the wazoos and this is one of them.

Heh, see? I am not as extreme as I may have sounded. I am against SSRI antidepressants. I think they're dangerous. Maybe my anger about my own situation spilled over a bit.