In most cases today, if a person becomes physically injured or ill, they seek out treatment and recovery with a number of medical professionals that specialize in the area, often have follow up appointments to ensure progress, and are seen to until they are fully recovered. One would think the same should go ill health of the the mental and psychological state, regrettably it rarely is handled in the same way with the same degree of care. In far too many facilities, patients are prescribed drugs that can actually cause more harm than help. Kohls (2010), argues that, “Patients will be taking their (FDA) drugs for years (despite no long-term trials proving safety and efficacy) as the only "treatment" for mental ill health. They know that their …show more content…
Scientifically speaking, this is more than a totally absurd way to “treat” patients, and needs crucially to be overseen by pharmacists, neurologists, psychiatrists, etc. The writer also claims that “The truth is that most, if not all, of psychotropic drugs are lethal at some dosage level, and therefore the drugs must be regarded as dangerous. The chronic use of these drugs is a major cause of cognitive disorders, brain damage, loss of creativity, loss of spirituality, loss of empathy, loss of energy, loss of strength, fatigue and tiredness, permanent disability and a multitude of metabolic adverse effects that can readily sicken the body...causing insomnia or somnolence, increased depression or anxiety, delusions, psychoses, paranoia, mania, etc”. This very quote, no more than three sentences puts common drugs used for treating mental illness in the light. These drugs are not only dangerous, but inhumane, causing patients to develop more problems than they originally were being treated for. Forever damming them to be put in the hands of people who have not but a clue the consequences their “treatment” options cause their patients, a lifetime of mental illness and increasingly so with each new medication, and an eternity searching for answers through the void of systematic institutionalized state mental care which they may never even …show more content…
But what happens when that is cross-examined? When people who are mentally ill are being thrown out of these establishments due to lack of funding resources or what have you, there is a word for it and it is called “deinstitutionalization”, and it has happened and will continue to at this rate. “Deinstitutionalization has two parts: the moving of the severely mentally ill out of the state institutions, and the closing of part or all of those institutions. The former affects people who are already mentally ill. The latter affects those who become ill after the policy has gone into effect and for the indefinite future because hospital beds have been permanently eliminated” (Torrey, 1997). Patients, or former patients in this case, often have severe disorders and are left either to their families or on their own to cope with illnesses which they could not possibly cope with on a day to day basis while lacking proper care. As a matter of fact, a study done reports that nearly 60% of deinstitutionalized patients had been afflicted with Schizophrenia, 15% with Alzheimers or other related brain diseases, and another 15% with depressive illness. Not even mentioning the other patients, who were reported to have even more threatening conditions including drug addiction with loss of brain function, Autism, retardation, so on and so forth. These helpless individuals not only were receiving shoddy
In the video, “The New Asylums”, it demonstrated how deinstitutionalization has left thousands of mentally ill patients in the hands of the prison system. As the mental health hospitals closed down, the police department and prison system has become responsible for the mentally ill people that are on the streets. There was a firm point made about the release of mentally ill patients- “When hundreds of thousands of mentally ill are released, they do not magically become healthy. They went to the streets, became homeless, and turned to a system that cannot say no.” The video also stated that today, there are nearly 500,000 mentally ill people being held in jails and prisons throughout the country. Furthermore, there was no safety net for those
Prisons are home to 33,000 mentally ill patients in California, alone. Filling 30 percent of California’s overall prison population, the prisons are becoming unconstitutionally crowded (Source C). In a Federal District Court ruling in Sacramento, “Judge Lawrence Karlton noted that the treatment of the seriously mentally ill continues to violate prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment” (Source C). Poor staffing is not fully to blame for inadequate care, insufficient treatment space, and suicide rates. When President Kennedy began the community mental health centers movement, he deprived the mentally ill of shelter which forced patients to live in the streets (Source A).
Proof written by David Auburn goes through the life of an esteemed mathematician plagued by mental illness. In the beginning of the play Proof we are introduced to a professor at a local Chicago College named Robert. We first are introduced to Robert through a delusion of Catherine’s, another main protagonist of David auburns play. Auburn shows Robert’s genius and madness at various stages throughout the play. Auburn goes on throughout his play to exemplify the impact mental illness has on everyday family life.
In today’s society, mental hospitals are still a potential solution for the mentally ill, but they are seeing a steady decline in incoming patients. Although there is still a need for the mentally ill to be admitted to mental institutions such as hospitals, the reality is that the heightened cost of treatment deters many potential patients. Instead, the mentally
Due in part to the community's lack of preparedness and resources, the needs of many of the deinstitutionalized has not been meet. Therefore many of the mentally ill have ended up exchanging hospitalization for institutionalization in prison or jail." This situation left many mentally ill on the streets with no one to look after them except the nation's police. Another reason for the increasing number of mentally ill individuals in the community is the expense of mental health services. Many individuals are unemployed and therefore without income. Many are not covered by health insurance and the individuals who do have insurance are often smothered under restrictions on coverage for mental illness. Others face time limits on in-patient treatment that will have rewarding effects. Others have difficulty accessing government-funded health coverage. Others depending upon their condition are not even aware that this program exits. Regardless of the reasoning police, as well as judge's and probation officers are on a daily basis faced with the increasing number of mentally ill individuals that are rotated amongst the system.
Mental sicknesses, like schizophrenia, brain diseases and other living conditions have affected many individuals in the United States from the past until now. Yet in the US, the institutions that usually treat people with these illnesses are not hospitals or psychiatric facilities, but rather jails and prisons. The United States have adopted a system that seems to incarcerate the mentally ill rather than treating them within help centers. “In 2012, there were roughly 356,268 inmates with severe mental illnesses in prisons and jails, while only 35,000 people with the same diseases were in state psychiatric hospitals.” Incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional facilities rather than treating them in health
Around the 1970’s and 1980’s around the United States many mental hospitals were shut down. There were many reasons why they closed these Asylums was because money, and knowing that there was only about twenty county asylums were built around the country. The asylums also known as the Looney bin was established in Britain after passing in 1808 county asylum act. There were so many patients in these asylums around the world in 1955 about 558,239 severely mentally ill people in the United States were accounted for. Now in these times any mentally ill people don’t get help they just go straight to jail without proper diagnosis or treatment. People need to know these people need extreme care and treatment. Even regular people or considered the norm in today’s society eventually go crazy when they’re in prison too long. We have as much people that are mentally ill as regularly incarcerated. There is one prison in Houston Texas that does take care there mentally ill. We have about 2.2 million
A person who has a chemical mental illness is likely regulated and being treated by a physician or medical professional. However, There is still a stigma to the mental health need so many people do not seek treatment but instead self medicate. Drug addiction and overdose is a sign of mental illness. If mental health that was not only quality but easily accessible to any person in need, it would eliminate a portion of the need for crisis intervention.
There are many different mental illnesses and ailments and just as many medications to treat them. The problem is that sometimes the medications are not correct for your disorders due to similar symptoms. This leads to problems with the patients who need help, but the patients are not getting the right medications and treatment they need.
In today’s society there is a greater awareness of mental illnesses. With this greater awareness one might assume that there would be a substantial increase in government involvement or funding in the area of mental illness treatment. Unfortunately this isn’t the case in the U.S. today. There are hundreds of thousands of people with mental illness that go untreated. These potential patients go untreated for many reasons. These reasons are discussed in the Time article “Mental Health Reform: What Would it Really Take.
In certain organization in the state level such as: keep qualified candidate that promoted the well-being state and the citizens in arena such as correctional and police officer, hospital staff and other trained individual. Without trained individual, the citizens with mental health are the one that will be hurt. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found that 130 patients at state-run hospitals had died under questionable circumstances over the course of seven years. That is when the feds stepped in. U.S. Department of Justice looked into the conditions of Georgia’s mental hospitals. What federal investigators found was that patients in Georgia facilities were dying or committing suicide at alarming rates. What is worse, the feds said, is that those incidents of neglect and abuse could have been prevented.
What is left is that we have many citizens who are mentally ill and are not receiving treatment. However the patients who are able to receive treatment are only able to have some treatment covered. Health insurers are responsible for covering the immensely large cost of substantial treatment, a mixture of medication and therapy; since therapy is highly priced, less reliable, and time consuming; patients typically do not receive treatment for therapy. Health insurers would much rather cover medication because it is cheaper, it heals patients faster, and it is more reliable than therapy. However, medication is not made to heal, but to only coax symptoms of a mental illness (Sandberg).
Psychological disorders are stated to be abnormalities of the mind, known as mental disorders (Klasco, 2011). Abnormalities of the mind cause persistent behaviors that affect an individual’s daily function and life (Klasco, 2011). The different types of psychological disorders include mood disorders, personality disorders, anxiety disorders, and eating disorders (Klasco, 2011). The causes of these disorders are unknown, but factors that contribute to these disorders include childhood experiences, chemical imbalances in the brain, illnesses, heredity, stress, and prenatal exposures (Klasco, 2011). Psychological disorders can be serious and can be life-threatening
69 percent of the creators of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders reported that the DSM had connections to the pharmaceutical industry (Cosgrove & Krimsky, 2012). Robert Whitakers research in his book “The Anatomy of an Epidemic” showed that many of the medications that are prescribed for psychiatric disorders actually end up hurting the patient more than helping them (Whitaker, 2010). Often people are prescribed medication for a psychiatric disorder which is actually just a pathologized version of normal human behavior. Taking these medications for essentially no reason eventually harms the patient because they frequently cause episodic and moderate emotional behavioral problems to be severe, chronic and disabling ones (Whitaker, 2010). This leads to a further rise in mental disorders, actual mental disorders. When we use drugs to get rid of symptoms we weaken our capacity to cope with the situations and we remove our ability to transcend the problem on our own. The research shows that using these drugs for short term treatment can be effective for some people but often they increase the chance that the person who is taking the drug becomes chronically ill in the long run (Whitaker, 2010). Therefore many people, who are treated for a mental disorder that could most often be treated with therapy, end up
Mental health is all about how we think, feel and behave. It refers to our cognitive, and/or our emotional wellbeing. It describes a sense of wellbeing. Mental health ‘problems’ or ‘difficulties’ are terms used to describe temporary reactions to a painful event, stress, or systems of drug or alcohol use, lack of sleep or physical illness. It can also be used to describe long-term psychiatric conditions, which may have significant effects on an individual’s functioning. Some of the most common mental health problems are; anxiety, depression, psychosis, mania, schizophrenia, anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa, OCD. A qualified clinician should only diagnose such conditions. Anxiety and depression feature as the two