The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
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    Defunding mental health--stranding the rich and famous

    By jollyroger on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 8:42pm |

    We are grown painfully accustomed to the stories of the homeless mentally ill street person whose violent outburst visits catastrophe upon some random passerby.

     

    When confronted by one of these cautionary tales, it is easy to cluck ones tongue and clutch ones garments, experiencing simultaneously the frisson of menace and the relief that such disasters are likely to touch only the already compromised, at least on the side of the perpetrator.

     

    We recognize at these times that the systematic defunding of mental health facilities, whether by way of community clinic or the more formal secure facilities where the flagrantly dangerous are taken for a period of observation, puts society at large at risk. Withal, I personally have always assumed that when the person swept up for involuntary observation comes from the upper (indeed, the ruling) class, the frequent turn of events where a dangerous individual is released because of insufficient resources is obviated by family wealth and influence.

     

    Hence, my astonishment to learn that in the recent tragedy befalling Creigh Deeds (two time Virginia Democratic Gubernatorial nominee and his (now deceased) twenty-year-old son and assaulter, the boy was brought before a magistrate, who recognized the need for a period of involuntary psychiatric observation.

     

    Despite this, because the number of hospital beds in locked psych wards was inadequate to the demands of the population, the boy was released to kill himself and attempt the murder of his father within 24 hours.

     

    When wealth and position are no guarantee of timely psychiatric intervention, we have come to a very troubling pass.

    Comments

    In Virginia, mental-health authorities can hold people for four to six hours after a magistrate judge issues an emergency custody order. After that, a magistrate must issue a temporary detention order, or TDO, to allow an individual to be held for 48 to 72 hours for further evaluation and treatment. But the order cannot be issued without an available bed.

    In 2012, the Virginia Office of the State Inspector General probed how often clinically necessary TDOs are not issued because no facility is available to accept the patient. Over a 90-day period, the office found that 72 people were turned away despite the fact that they met the criteria to be involuntarily held for treatment.


    by jollyroger on Thu, 11/21/2013 - 8:50pm

    Yeah we had a state senator in Virginia whose son evidently stabbed him several times and he was forced to shoot the poor lad. 

    His son had been denied a bed in a mental health unit due to sequestration?

    Then I read this crap at Salon? where FOX News was making fun of homeless people?

    And Zimmerman still has his guns?

    Supposedly we as citizens can get our brains around polio and HIV and a number of diseases and such; but damn, if a guy is sitting in the street talking to himself and holding a pie pan; any idiot can tell there is something wrong.

    Oh sure, sometimes it's an SNL sketch, but damn....there is something happening here and we have no clue what it is!


    by Richard Day on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 1:29am

    Yeah we had a state senator in Virginia whose son evidently stabbed him several times and he was forced to shoot the poor lad.

    My understanding is that the poor lad shot himself. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

    State Sen. Creigh Deeds was stabbed multiple times early today at his Bath County home and his son, Gus, is dead from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.


    by Verified Atheist on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 9:17am

    I fear that some of the salient details have escaped partner DD's attention.

     

    I was perhaps remiss in not emphasizing the suicide component of this tragedy, although I confess that I thought that by now the story was widespread.

     

    Also, sequestration had nothing to do with the bugetary constraints at the root of the shortage of beds--this was a purely statewide issue

     

    Moreover, subsequent investigation seems to indicate that beds were available but undiscovered by whatever survey preceded the release of the unfotunate youth.

    <Austin Deeds, who was 24, had undergone a psychiatric evaluation Monday, and officials initially said the reason he was not admitted to a hospital was that no bed was available. But multiple nearby hospitals later confirmed that they had available space but were never contacted.</a>

     


    by jollyroger on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 9:33am

    The clarified story is even more bizarre--here is a former gubernatorial candidate who cannot even muster a balls-to-the-wall intervention to save his son...


    by jollyroger on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 9:36am

    “Generally our feeling is that if a family with resources and know-how has difficulty accessing and navigating the mental-health system, it speaks volumes about what happens to people who don’t have resources,” she said.

     

    (Mira Signer, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness,)


    by jollyroger on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 9:42am

    Mental health has always been left behind, with those horror stories surfacing much too often about the person who should have gotten care but didn't. 

    In the late 1960s my brother tripped on LSD with long lasting effects.  He hadn't slept in days and announced that he was on his way to the Isle of Wight to be with the Beatles.  They were enlightened by then, having gone up on the mountain and he needed their help.  He was seeing the devil on the TV and the devil was telling him to kill his mother.

    Long story short, I had to stage a sit-in at the psychiatric hospital in order to get him a bed. Why?  Because that hospital broke their units up into geographic areas and his particular unit was full.  There were empty beds in other units but they said they couldn't put him in one of them since he lived in that other area.

    I thought that was pretty crazy so I forced the issue and they relented for just that one night.  Then he was out and we started all over again.  I finally found a place for him but he conned them into thinking he was doing better and after three days they released him.

    The problem so often is that unless they demonstrate that they're a danger to themselves or others, they can check themselves out.  If they're sane enough they know to keep cool and not demonstrate the things that would keep them inside those walls.  So there they are, wandering around alone, or in the care of their families, who are terrified and waiting for the inevitable day that all hell breaks loose again. 

    But since it's not a top priority nothing is done.  It goes on and on.


    by Ramona on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 8:26am

    Acid presents interesting challenges--one time I took a few hits plus some psylocibin...for a while I couldn't remember my name, but it didn't bother me cause I figured I'd remember by the time I needed to tell anyone my what my name was.  

     

    Nonetheless, I can see where a person might find that disorienting.

     

    In the Deeds case, it seems like the son had already gotten past the point where he was independently signing in or out--but the bureaucratic idiocy you reference seems to have played a role in this tragedy, as the subsequent reports indicate that there were available beds (odd concept, incidentally, since a person might be far safer sitting in a chair under ubservation than set loose to commit atrocities)


    by jollyroger on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 9:10am

    I don't understand why nobody checked to see if there were beds in other facilities for that young man.  I've been through this more than a few times, what with the crazy gene my father (who didn't have it) passed along to members of my family, and, other than that long ago experience with my brother, I've always found that the staff will work endlessly to find beds when they're needed.  And it wasn't money or even good insurance that did it--I know for a fact what massive medical bills can do to a family.

    But, as you've said, if even the ones with endless resources can't get some relief, where does that leave the majority who just slog along, trying to get the system to work for them?  Health care, whether it's physical or mental, is an absolute disgrace in this country.


    by Ramona on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 11:20am

     why nobody checked to see if there were beds in other facilities for that young man. 

     

    I believe this may become the focus of some concerted investigation, which is the flip side of the rich and powerful victimized by the system...they have ways of making the system pay,


    by jollyroger on Sat, 11/23/2013 - 8:44pm

    I am alive so must live. Some wounds won't heal. Your prayers and your friendship are important to me


    by jollyroger on Fri, 11/22/2013 - 11:57am