After closing psychiatric hospitals, Michigan incarcerates mentally ill

[Bozita]

http://www.freep.com/article/20111127/OPINION02/111270434/After-closing-psychiatric-hospitals-Michigan-incarcerates-mentally-ill-?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE

After closing psychiatric hospitals, Michigan incarcerates mentally ill
1:46 AM, Nov. 27, 2011 | Comments
By Jeff Gerritt
Detroit Free Press Columnist


Wayne County Sheriff Benny Napoleon spoke for most sheriffs when he said, during a community meeting earlier this year, that his jail had become his county's largest mental health care institution.

Over the last two decades, changes in state policy and big cuts in funding for community mental health care have pushed hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people into county jails and state prisons.

Between 1987 and 2003, Michigan closed three-quarters of its 16 state psychiatric hospitals, including Northville in suburban Detroit. The state now provides the sixth-lowest number of psychiatric beds per capita in the nation, reports the Treatment Advocacy Center.

"We closed too many (hospitals), too quickly," Mark Reinstein, president of the Mental Health Association in Michigan, told me this month. "It wasn't done in a planned, rational way."

more, lots more...

[annm4peace]

1. this happened in Fresno, CA also

It is shameful and inhumane. It is sick.

I think they only way to stop it at this point besides education and trying to vote in mature and humane politicians is to sue. sue.. sue.. sue..

[KamaAina]

29. All over CA, when St. Raygun was governor, of course

:eyes:

A brief stroll down mid-Market or around 16th and Mission in SF will show you the results. :scared:

[spanone]

2. prisons make profits

[freshwest]

5. And 'government should be run like a business.' Thanks, GOP! Misery accomplished!

[woo me with science]

17. 2008 NOW documentary on prisons for profit:

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/video.html

[Angry Dragon]

3. Gulags, re-education camps, internment camps

incarceration for profit center

[mopinko]

4. has happened everywhere.

cook county jail is, likewise, the largest psyche unit in illinois. especially when it comes to addiction.

[Odin2005]

9. Not Minnesota, we provide in-home care for the mentally ill.

We are one of the few states that did what should have happened everywhere after the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, give them care in their communities.

[Jackpine Radical]

15. That is correct, and is the right approach.

I believe MN has about 1/3 as many people in prison per capita as WI, right next door. It's not just the more humane treatment of the mentally ill, but the willingness to explore sentencing alternatives to prison that has made much of the difference.

[Odin2005]

20. People from other parts of the country are shocked by the help we give to the disabled and...

...mentally ill. Our system is considered to be the best in the nation by far. The emphasis is on integrating these people into the community. I know 2 very sweet young ladies with Down's Syndrome who work at grocery stores, and I have a good friend with a physical disability from when she was shaken as a baby who works at Wal-Mart as a greeter (for as much I hate Wal-Mart, they do a lot for local disabled folks).

[Jackpine Radical]

30. Until the late 80's (Tommy Thompson), our system was about as good as yours.

Then we began the big conversion from mental health centers to prisons.

[Leftist Agitator]

39. Minnesota also has debtors prisons...

So I wouldn't brag about how enlightened the state of Minnesota is...

[elocs]

19. Which is a big reason my 20 y.o. goddaughter's family got her out of Cook County

to here is western Wisconsin where she has a chance to get the help she needs.

[bloomington-lib]

6. I guess they didn't want to privatize mental hospitals or else there

would be tons of them with a strong lobby to institutionalize more people.

[freshwest]

11. It's the reverse of 'people over profits.' Lobbyists oppose public institutions to make profits.

They don't care who dies, or how miserable their deaths are. Thus the demonization of those idealistic enough to work at public places that do help people.

[Jackpine Radical]

18. The problem is that medicaid disbursements for mental hospital care

are very low & not tempting for private business.

The rates were set low years ago in an effort to encourage the closing of the mental hospitals and discharging of their patients.

I used to work on a county-run acute psych ward. We were forced out of operation in about 1990 due to changes in Medical Assistance payments.

[TheKentuckian]

25. Prisons are a more consistent revenue stream and higher profit to cost per head.

There are always dollars available for prisons, psychiatric care is much more politically vulnerable with higher costs and accountability. Abusing a patient catches you some potential hell but prisoners are seen as completely expendable to the point of broad societal humor based on rape of convicts.

[mulsh]

7. One of the rare "liberal" things Reagan did as Gov. was to close

most of California's mental hospitals and scale back outpatient mental health care. It worked out great. Thousands of mentally ill people have been on our streets with not a hope in hell of ever receiving adequate treatment since the late 60's.

Another reason why I hate Reagan and conservatives in general with the fire of 10,000 suns

[Fire Walk With Me]

8. Oddly, the #Occupations are embracing the homeless and mentally ill

providing for them for the first time in however long, some sense of community and acceptance.

Two sides of a coin. Which one would you choose?

[revolution breeze]

12. In New Orleans they are shooing them off

Trying to hide all the protestors and other "ilk" in Duncan Plaza because it is near the Superdome and this weekend has been all about FOOTBALL! How sad has our contry become?

[Fire Walk With Me]

16. I don't know if this is an absolute, but months ago my flatmates had football going on TV

and W was trotted out before the game. The stadium audience cheered, with no sign of dissent.

[backscatter712]

21. YMMV. Occupy Denver welcomes the homeless.

As far as I'm concerned, the homeless are the ones who've been screwed the most by the 1%, so they have every right to be there, and they do a hell of a lot for the movement.

[revolution breeze]

23. I am not saying this is right.

For years, Duncan Plaza was an emcampment for the homeless in New Orleans, a safe place where the homeless actually looked out for on another. My family regularly brought food and toiletry items to the occupants. Then a mayor trying to make a "statement" decided he did not like looking down from his office and being reminded of the homeless problem. He "cleaned out" Duncan Plaza and had a chain like fence erected around it. The Plaza is now home of the Occupy New Orleans movement and have been very welcoming to the homeless and has provided alot of information to tourists who wander off the beated path. But if anyone dares step outside of the Plaza around the corner onto Poydras Street in front of the television cameras, they are carted off to jail (where they will probably be kept until after the cameras leave on Tuesday). People do not want to be reminded of the reality we are facing when they are sucking back their Budweiser and eating chips during a football game!

[backscatter712]

31. Ah, I see.

Glad to see the Occupy movement is welcoming to them.

[Fire Walk With Me]

10. Judge a culture by how it treats its weak. Period.

As a "functioning" dual diagnosis, I know that some who do not like me, want me in jail.

May that then be YOUR karma. The judgement is the mirror.

[cutlassmama]

13. this has been happening everywhere since Raygun closed the hospitals

[upi402]

14. Reaganomics is evil

Praise the savior!

[lunatica]

22. Reagan took care of that problem by closing the mental health sites

And the mentally ill and insane ended up as the first large number of homeless in California.

[HereSince1628]

26. There was also a wave of this in the 1960s

No government really wants to spend money on the mentally ill.

[HereSince1628]

24. Michigan dips into its history on this one...

There is a long history of conflating the mentally ill and criminals. Now that they 'know better' but money is tight they're doing it again.

In the early 1950's as prisons filled the prisons dumped criminals into mental health facilities.

It's always been common to have a lot of mentally ill incarcerated rather than placed as mental health in-patients.

Back in the 1960's when the feds and states looked to cut expenses of in-patient mental hospitals they turned to 'main-streaming' and 'community-based care,' folks for whom that didn't work ended up 'down by the river' or in prisons.

What we've learned about the project for the new American century is that the going gets economically tough in America, America casts off its sick and needy.

It makes sense, actually....Michigan hasn't got a lot of ice-floes this time of year.

[jwirr]

27. The really sad thing about closing these hospitals is that while they

can close the treatment centers for persons with developmental disabilities and they will be taken care of in the community this is not true for the mentally ill. Mainly because the first group has organized support within the community including families and care providers who worked to bring them home, the group that was housed in these hospitals do not.

They still suffer from the stigma regarding mental illness and for that reason are given little community based support. Often even their own families are not involved with them. In MN we are trying to build a community based service program for them but it is not easy and often actually is opposed by many in the community.

No state should close these hospitals unless they have the "beds" ready in the local community to replace the ones in the hospital. Otherwise they are just dumping patients into the streets.

[Downwinder]

28. Won't be long before the are the largest Health Care facilities.

[Liberal_in_LA]

32. horrible about Timothy Joe Souders

[NMMNG]

33. Ronnie Raygun would be so proud

:puke:

[usregimechange]

34. Less expensive solution with better results: Mental Health Courts

[Posteritatis]

35. I've heard the term a few times before - what would those entail exactly? (nt)

[donheld]

36. Not all of them. They elected on Governor.

[Quantess]

37. oddly enough,

"freep.com" is a trustworthy site! :)

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

38. Can't blame Reagan for all of this...

The left was fighting just as hard to turn the insane out on the street. They might have had the best intentions but the idea that people who could not function unassisted in any capacity were just going to rise to the occasion and stay on their medication and attend treatment on their own accord was ridiculous.

Indeed the treatment of the insane is a point of rare consensus in this country. The right doesn't want to pay for institutional care and the left thinks institutional care violates the rights of the insane and that wonder drugs and social services will allow them to live independently.

[WinkyDink]

40. Reagan was THE ONE who turned Liberal concepts on their head here.

"The final report of the commission to President Carter contained the recommendations upon which the Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 was based. Despite the methodological flaws of the earlier report, the act was considered a landmark in mental health care policy. The key to the proposals included an increase in funding for Community Mental Health Centers and continued federal government support for such programs. But this ran counter to the financial goals of the Reagan administration, these were of c ourse to reduce federal spending, reduce social programs, and transfer responsibility of many if not most government functions to the individual states. So, the law signed by President Carter was rescinded by Ronald Reagan on August 13, 1981. In accordance with the New Federalism and the demands of capital, mental health policy was now in the hands of individual states."
http://www.sociology.org/content/vol003.004/thomas.html

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

41. This was largely already settled at the state level in the 1970's

In the form of activist litigation against state systems and or individual institutions. The crazies were triumphantly freed from the institutions and immediately took up residence under the nearest overpass. Community mental health treatment is just an ideological wank - it requires active cooperation of people who are either too paranoid or feeble minded to be active participants in their own care. My girlfriend has been assaulted twice in San Francisco by schizophrenics who were being "treated in the community".

You could put the entire defence budget into "Community Mental Health Centers" and there would still be violent and insane vagrants roaming the streets.