Whose responsibility is it to see that people with mental illness get help?
Posted at 5:00 AM on January 11, 2011
by Eric Ringham
(29 Comments)
Filed under: Health, Security
The suspect in Saturday's shootings in Arizona had struck people who knew him as disturbed and possibly prone to violence. Today's Question: Whose responsibility is it to see that people with mental illness get help?
Comments (29)
Helping my son with his emotional problems and anger issues. Its a challenge that is bigger then me
I have personal experience with someone who is mentally ill. I have been wondering "whose responsibility is it to see that people with mental illness get help" most of my life. This person has been arrested, in the system, medicated, treated, counseled, parental rights have been given & taken away, military didn't want him, church thought he was unstable, & anything else you can think of. While this person is not a danger unless provoked, do you know when & where the provoking will take place? This person has been in & out of several systems for 50 years. So I ask; whose responsibility is it to see that people with mental illness get help?
Everyone of us.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmcOP2SUgFc
While a community can do alot to support a family that has a member with mental illness, the professional mental health system needs to do more to educate the community about where the resources are and how to access them, destigmatize those with mental illness, and they need to develop a better triage system or algorithm or what ever so when teachers, coworkers, employers, family members recognize a problem, the dangerous people do not fall through the cracks anymore. What are the steps everyone should take to get people help? Is the professional Mental Health system doing everything it can to follow up with people who could be dangerous to themselves and others?The days of the Snake Pit are over and there are medications and treatment available. If people refuse treatment ,we as a society need to decide what the next step is to keep us all safe.
I do not understand. He needed a letter from a psychiatrist saying he posed no threat in order to go back to college; but was still able to buy a gun?
We need a national policy on background checks for all gun purchases at the very least.
If that stopped him from buying a gun, many people would still be alive. How can anyone argue against that?
If we, "the village," believe that mental illness should be treated with the same care and concern as, say leukemia or heart disease, then we need to make sure the whole family receives help. As someone who has spent half her life in psychiatric units visiting family members who didn't believe they had an illness, I salute those who take brave steps to deal proactively and preventively with mental health. Having a family therapist should be just as important as having a family physician and taking it upon oneself to get screened should be just as celebrated as the annual colonoscopy.
If we consider ourselves members of the human family then each one of us is responsible for each other.
If a person is breaking the law, a witness should call the police. Police officers are trained to recognize characteristics of mental health disorder, and they know how to reasonably deal with such people.
If a person appears to have a mental health condition that makes the person vulnerable, a witness should contact the local county authority. Emergency human services are usually available 24 hours a day.
Who do I call? If someone calls me, what should I do?
These are 2 perfectly legitimate questions with no answers. If I call 911 because someone on the streets is acting in a manner I think is totally irrational, what are they going to do? "He scares me" is not necessarily an indication of an individual's mental health - after all, the scared person might be the one with impaired judgement.
I am an advocate of making mental health services both a) available, and b) socially acceptable. If it were socially acceptable, it would be more likely to be made available by dint of being seen as desirable & therefore covered under health insurance plans.
I liked Sharon's comments.
Cool.
I would add we all are responsible. There is no mechanism to help or report.
And those mechanisms we would expect to help often are restricted or eve some refuse helping.
One thing that would help a lot is maybe exposure and teaching on recognizing mental illness. And related issues of logic, it could not hurt.
Until insurance companies fully understand their need to pitch in as part of the package.... patients are less and less likely to seek help on their own. Its hard enough to consider it, and the price tag without assistance is a hindrance.
Although I think in Minnesota we have laws making it a required offering by insurance companies. Maybe wrong though.
Our high school discussion classes
(XTrack ALC in Brooklyn Park, District 287) offer the following insights:
1. All people deserve healthcare which could include regular screening for mental health issues.
2. All institutions (schools, churches, etc.) need to be watchful for signs of disorders which professionals should refer for further help.
3. Meds cannot be forced on adults, but non-compliant people may need to be removed from society for some sort of treatment.
4. All people have the potential for violence, mental illness, and antisocial behavior. We need to lessen the stigma & change the language used to describe people with disabilities (e.g., "crazy," "retarded," etc.).
We need to make help people, make help available, accessible, & "safe."
We are all responsible to see that people with mental illness get help. Unfortunately, we do not agree with what is "NORMAL." What is normal for one person is not normal for other people. For example, I do not think it is NORMAL to believe that if everyone had a gun, then violence will decrease. I don't think it is NORMAL to assume that America can afford continuing these Wars and Corporate Tax-Cuts but we cannot afford Universal Healthcare, including mental healthcare. I don't think is is NORMAL to assume that we can pollute our environment with chemical and nuclear toxins and believe that people's health will not be effected by this. I don't think it is NORMAL to assume that having a SHOOTING PARTY to 'REMOVE' a Congresswoman from office would not provoke an unstable person to gun down someone.
Americans definition of NORMAL has become skewed in recent years. Maybe we all need mental healthcare.
We can begin to answer this question with a metaphor; if we see a car driving erratically on the road, do we go past it, hoping that no one gets hurt, or do we call police to alert them of the situation? When it comes to mental illness, when a person is a potential harm to others or themselves, they need help and support. Often our impulse is to avert our eyes and hope that someone else will take care of the situation. Do we call the person driving erratically on the road an idiot and blare the horn? Or do we recognize that this driver may be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, or could be having a medical emergency such as a stroke or heart attack?
It is the responsibility of anyone who recognizes the danger to do what they can to prevent tragedy. In the case of this young man, the answer to his erratic behavior should not have been to merely call security and remove him from class, but to get him the obvious MEDICAL help he needed. Mental illness is called an illness for a reason. Had this student received support and compassion rather than fear and judgment at college, he might have become stabilized with therapy and medication and/or commitment to a hospital and this tragedy averted.
"I think it's up to the friends and family of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin to be sure they get the help they need.
Posted by Curt Lee | January 11, 2011 10:10 AM "
The Wellstone Funeral continues.........
Keep it up.
Ideally, family, friends, and community members, including teachers, medical professionals, police officers, etc., are responsible for taking notice that individuals with mental illness are struggling and suggesting resources. However, unless there exists a threat of imminent harm, no one can coerce individuals to seek help. The vast majority of individuals with mental illness are not violent, either toward themselves or others. A better question would be: "How can we ensure that help is available and accessible to individuals with mental illness?"
I am totally stumped by this question, and interested to read any constructive ideas that are given. It is a hard question, and certainly not one with a blanket solution.
I have a parent with severe mental illness. Based on this experience, I have no idea how society should work with people who are mentally ill. Provided they are not committing crimes, what can you do with a free person who makes poor, non-sensical choices because their brain is not working correctly? If you are the one who tries to help, what do you do when they want to have nothing to do with you? When you ssuggest treatment and they declare they don't have a problem? Some mental illnesses prevent those suffereing from realizing they need treatment. Our legal system and government provides little assistance, but I'm not sure what I would suggest that they do.
I do hope that goverment leaders enlist the best mental health professionals to find constructive solutions to these problems. In addition to violence by the mentally ill, this is major cause of homelessness. You can't solve the problem of homelessness without addressing mental health issues.
I am glad to see the discussion around the Arizona Tragedy has finally gotten around to the real problem, that of care for someone that is mentally unbalanced. the first people that should have been the parents as well as the counselors at his school prior to his graduation. Then the Community college should have been more assertive when they removed him from school and lastly the local police and the sheriff should have been aware of his mental problem since he had several run ins with law. Also, why was there no security people at this gathering? This should be ASOP with any gathering on a public street.
I think it's up to the friends and family of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh or Sarah Palin to be sure they get the help they need.
I feel it is a communities responsibility to look after it's members. If we can't do that, then we aren't communities.
If I encounter someone who's mentally ill and needs help, and if I recognize that I have some moral responsibility to do something, who do I call? 911?
The way the system is set up, every person in this country as a right to be mentally ill and make poor choices even if it is a detriment to themselves. The exception to that is if your mental illness endangers your life or the life of others around you. They grey area is that "endangerment of life" aspect. Is the schizophrenic who thinks the devil is chasing him down the street a danger to himself or others? Probably not, but it is possible. If the seriously and persistently mentally ill population were treated as if they were all a danger to themselves or others, we would have a serious problem of where and how to help these people get help and stabilize their mental illness. The system as it is currently set up is not designed to help masses of people in crisis. That said, I do think we all have a responsibility to help those around us who are having serious mental health crisis. Every county in the state has a mental health crisis line where people can make reports and request interventions for those who are mentally ill enough to be in danger or dangerous. Crisis teams are trained to assess the situation and get law enforcement involved if necessary.
Uh...everyone.
this is a tough question i really dont know the answer, its up to others around to intervene somehow when the bad signs happen!
I was 8 years old and my four cousins came to stay with us because their mother had been institutionalized. She was sweet, beautiful, delicate and beaten by her husband because he could not understand why she didnt keep the house clean. I remember my mother's outrage at her treatment. In later years "advocates" for the mentally ill made it difficult, if not impossible, to institutionalize someone against their will. Now we have reached a cross roads where we must learn to balance the rights of the mentally ill with their need for protection and care and our need for safety when they lose control.
The free market, only capitalism can do it. if there is a need then a private for profit company will take care of everything. Government should never have any responsibility in this. No tax money should treat any mental illness. This is complete sarcasm. If people had health insurance that would pay for mental health then it would be much better.
Anyone who is aware of someone with a dangerous mental illness is responsible for insisting they get treatment. It's kind of along the same lines as knowing a crime is being committed and not doing anything about it. You're not legally liable for the crime happening, but having the ability to stop it and doing nothing is wrong. Same thing here: if you know that someone could be a danger to themselves or others, it would be wise to try to help out in some way.
This is one of those things that's everyone's responsibility in general, but no one's in particular, which is why it too often doesn't get done. The way to get such things done is to have some kind of societal structure in place, with people hired to do them on our behalf-- i.e., a government program. Unfortunately, since our current political environment is averse to anything that looks like more government, it's unlikely we'll actually deal with this problem effectively. The free market is useless in this case.
The problem isn't wether or not a person needs help because as any psychologist will tell you that you can't help someone who doesn't want it. In the old days we had state mental hospitals that solved the problem of protecting us from the mentally ill but they did little or nothing to help the patients. The watered down system we have now is not effective. There are people out there that can be helped to lead semi-normal lives with medication. Psychiatric drugs are often very dangerous and there is no system in place to monitor there use. A doctor prescribes a medication and says if you have feelings of violence or suicide call me. First off you are trusting a mentally ill person to take the drugs as they are prescribed. Second you are trusting an unstable person to report that they are feeling unstable when they may not even reallize they are. We need a new improved system that gives us the ability to intitutionalize certain people until they are on the road to recovery and a monitoring system when we let them out. You can't lead a horse to water but if you tie it near the watering hole it will on it's own accord probably drink. If not at least it's you know it's there to insert a needle to re-hydrate it.
The question says a lot. We should know who is responsible.
Those most responsible are: 1) Those who allow guns to be sold to the insane. 2) Those who stand in the way of effective management of the insane.
This unfortunate young man has schizophrenia. His problem was ignored even though he had been obseved in public to be irrational. Mankind has a disgusting way of ignoring obvious problems.
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