Mentally Ill Being Abandoned Again! Where is Our Compassion?

This post is a follow up on one I did for hometown of Greensboro and Guilford County, but since this is a state wide problem I have decided to post here also.
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My post of January 17, 2007 talked about out drug problems in the United States and here in Greensboro. I went on to explain how our War on Drugs started in 1970 by President Nixon simply isn’t working because we are trying to eliminate the producers rather than the consumers. When there is no longer a market for drugs the producers will stop on their own accord. To eliminate the consumers we need much more in the way of drug treatment and rehabilitation. And yet of the budget for the War on Drugs only 6% is spent on treatment whereas 94% is spent on interdiction trying to keep the drugs out of the country. Stupid and not working!

I then went on to decry the Guilford Count Commissioners limiting the budget of The Guilford Center following the states new rules for Medicaid requiring the counties to turn the mental health treatment over to the private sector. This was done as a cost savings attempt. I’m not sure about the cost savings, but I don’t think it will save money. Time will tell about that aspect. In the meantime places like The Guilford Center would have been disbanded and the mentally ill will go back to the streets and incarceration in our jails instead of getting the help they need.

Well it has started already according to Sheriff Barnes. He says that more and more people being brought in for disorderly conduct are showing up and continuing the aberrant behavior in jail. He mentions, “For instance, their doing things like throwing feces,” then goes on to explain that they are doing worse things with feces than throwing it.

These people are not criminals and do not belong in jails! Our policemen are not prepared to help these people and should not be expected to deal with them. Not with the crime in our city and the over crowded conditions in the Guilford County jail already. At the same time, citizens should not have to fear being accosted by a person who is out of control and neither should we tolerate suicides happening, which is often the case with mentally ill people who are not receiving help.

Guilford Center Director Billy Pierce said that they have thus far eliminated 122 positions from the 320 member staff. Those remaining at present are trying to help the 685 mental health patients they were responsible for to find private care providers. They are also trying to help past clients with medication management which is a real problem with most mentally ill persons. As long as they are on medication they are able to function in society, but if they miss just one day they begin to lose their mental balance and this invariably leads to forgetting altogether to take their medication. Before the state’s new Medicaid requirements the Center’s social workers could pick up clients and bring them into the
Center for help. They can no longer do this. This then is when the police officers have to do the picking up and bringing these non-functioning mentally ill people in to the jails. I can assure you that Private providers are not hunting their clients down on the streets even if it is in the clients best interests.

The public was appalled by stories coming from mentally ill hospitals and asylums and so the public demanded that these terrible institutions be closed and the mentally ill be released. The cry was, “The mentally ill are not criminals and do not belong behind bars!” I am ashamed to admit now that I was one of those screamers, marchers and sign carriers. The state had no problem with complying with the publics demands because it was so much cheaper to put these people on the welfare rolls than to provide 3 squares and a bed. So in the 1960’s one after another mental health facility was closed and the patients left to go where they chose. Well, most ended up on the streets homeless and easy prey for the thugs to beat, rape, torture and murder. And now with the greater problems with drug addicts we have even more mentally ill person sons on the streets than ever. The news papers don/t usually bother to report muggings or even murders of vagrants. And, if they do it is hidden on the back pages because after all, who in Hell cares if a bum is beaten up!? Now if there is a case of neglect in a nursing home it is front and center news. So the public is not aware of how terrible life is for these helpless ones. But just ask someone who is involved with the homeless and you will hear the horror stories.

This is a prime example of irresponsible activism! All we fools could see was the horrible conditions in the hospitals, and did not stop to consider what closing the hospitals would mean. What should have been done was to improve the system and put in more safe-guards and better regulate the hospitals so that these cruelties did not happen. There were after all far more caring people in the hospitals trying to help these poor souls than sadistic thugs who harmed them.

What happened was that slowly communities saw the need to set up facilities such as The Guilford Center to help these people. And now when the need is to expand these facilities we instead are again closing off the only help available to our most helpless.

We have so very many problems to deal with in our society now. The country and the world have become so complicated and dangerous as communication and transportation has narrowed to the point where there are no boundaries or time limitations. A problem in the Middle East reaches us almost immediately and often becomes a problem for us. Somehow, we the people who are supposed to be the government have got to get our priorities straight and make our demands known and known loud and clear to those who are elected to keep things running smoothly. I am fresh out of ideas people. It has to be you younger, brighter and more energetic ones who see that justice is done now. BB