The State of California needs additional Psychiatric Hospitals for the severely mentally ill who can not take care of themselves and need more care than they receive at home. Some people are cured by modern anti-depressants while others are not helped, continue to decline, and become unable to cook, clean, shop, wash clothes, or otherwise function well enough to live at home. As Governor of California, Ronald Reagan shut down the State Hospital system stating that mental illness didn’t really exist, people were faking it, and were basically just lazy. Since that time science has proven otherwise. Schizophrenia, Bipolar disorder, PTSD, Traumatic Brain injury, are all real medical conditions that need real medical treatment plus temporary or permanent housing and care. When professional help and temporary or permanent housing is not available the mentally ill often become homeless. Much has been said about the mentally ill but too often we overlook the extraordinary burden their plight puts on the immediate family, relatives, and friends who quickly become overwhelmed trying to provide 24 hour care while also trying to live their own lives. As time goes on the burden proves to be simply too much. Everyone has someone in their family or knows someone who has someone in their family that has Bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. The problem is much larger than is currently perceived. More and more mentally ill patients are sent through the prison system which is a mistake. Prisons have no success of correcting mental illness and patients often leave worse off than when they arrived. Having a damaged and non-functioning brain is not a crime in and of itself and patients should be treated with more dignity than throwing them in cells with common criminals. Some researchers view mental illness as brain chemistry gone awry, but we are more than just brain chemistry, we are people and the whole person must be treated. Please consider increasing the number of public owned psychiatric hospitals in the State of California with both short term and long term care
Posted on: Tue, 26 Aug 2014 11:08:55 +0000
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