Story in the local news. Man caught in airport baggage claim pleasuring himself. Officers were going to write him a ticket but he said he was having a mental health crisis and pleaded to be taken to jail. Released a few days later and back to baggage claim with a repeat of previous behavior. Guy came from Michigan with a 20 year history of paranoid schizophrenia. Oregon says they need 4,000 psychiatric beds to cope with the current inventory of mentally ill. State has 400, with for-profit psychiatric beds being eliminated as fast as private equity hospital operators can file the paperwork. Apparently the mentally ill tend not to be a profitable demographic when the focus is on Executive Compensation rather than patient health or the safety of the community.
TMF won’t let me post the link. Go to Google News and search for “PDX baggage claim”.
The state governments and federal government are a disgrace. And we know exactly why they are a disgrace. Thank you to no one watching the ejits channel Fox news.
Desantis isn’t the Michigan Governor, we aren’t paying to ship troubled people out of state. We did close down the majority of our mental health care centers in the 1980’s, but that was due to Reagan cutting Fed funding. Michigan has got problems, but we ain’t Florida and Desantis, lol
I think he came to Oregon 20+ years ago. Wasn’t that during John Engler?
((Engler’s administration was characterized by privatization of state services, income tax reduction, a sales tax increase, educational reform, welfare reform, and major reorganization of executive branch departments.}}
that was the tail-end of Engler’s years as Governor. And Engler certainly embraced the Reagan philosophy of government, he was loved by half the state, despised by the other half.
I know someone living in rural north Texas with paranoid schizophrenia. That is a bad mental illness. People like him practically require constant care and monitoring. Parents can’t do it. Family can’t do it. But that can’t happen in Texas. He’s a revolving door of jail, half-way house, subsidized housing. To quote Steely Dan, “You go back, Jack, do it again, wheel turnin’ 'round and 'round”.
Yes, it’s expensive to care for people like that. But it needs to be done.
My aunt was firmly in the “hate” cohort. Engler tried to loot the teacher’s pension fund to cover up a budget deficit his policies had created.
Engler’s closure of most of the mental care facilities has worked out, whether intended or not, to transfer the cost of caring for the mentally ill from the state’s budget, to that of the county jails, where the people end up.
Most states or some, I am uncertain of the number, have moved to some better care for the mentally ill. Out patient facilities are less expensive and the meds are better now. Hardly a great world for the mentally ill but perhaps also less soul destroying for some that can have a better life than being a ward of the state. The difference being in how profoundly some are and whether meds work safely or are taken by the patient.
In many cases things are much better for the mentally ill now.
The key factors of change in the 1980s were the legal issues of freedom of speech which before the law is nonsense for the profoundly mentally ill and separately better out patient care. The finally factor was trying to save on costs. This meant in CT putting profoundly ill people into neighborhood homes with caretakers. A handful of patients per home safely housed at less cost. This also meant a very cruel reality for the profoundly mentally ill who lost all care and housing if the patient would not seek or maintain their help.
Reagan’s claim to this of sorts is a sickness in our culture that is mean, destructive and dumb. Save a penny loose a pound. We were laying off healthy people. People were defaulting on their mortgages. Their children weren’t getting educated. God bless the stupid who supported this and then gave a tax break to the wealthy for GDP growth which never materialized. The definition of insanity is not knowing right from wrong.