dakota44

I don't know the answer to that for sure, but certainly insurance companies might cover such situations, where there is insurance, and likely Medicare would kick in for those without the means to pay. I suspect in a court ordered situation the government would be on the hook to pay. It is certainly an issue that would need to be resolved to make any reasonable approach workable.

Sally Redux

Some of the families we work with in my volunteer group are referred through mental health agencies, but I wonder how much help is available, especially for single people? A good friend of ours in England is a psychiatrist, he said that modern drugs are so good that there isn't much to do in his job, I dont know how true that is!

Steerpike

Remember, Dakota - Charty is one of those guys who believes the 2nd Amendment, written over two hundred years ago and with the clear context of forming a militia for defensive purposes, applies today to Joe Sixpack wanting to take his automatic weapon out hunting so he can annihilate a few Bambis.



Sorry, just trying to lighten the mood here ...

Michael

A large majority of the mentally disturbed are eligible for medicaid since many are on disability due to their mental illness. Many are prescribed drugs which often stabilizes them but many quit taking the drugs.

Once they miss a few days of taking the drugs, they become more paranoid and it can become more difficult or impossible to get them to start taking the drugs again.

Although providing more mental health services will possibly improve the situation a bit, the current law does not allow for anyone to be forced to take medication.

In the case of the shooter, his parents were notified of his mental health problems by the school but they couldn't force their son (over 18) to under go treatment and he probably assumed that he was fine. Forcing him to under go treatment would be similar to the 1950s/1960s which is not allowed by the supreme court ruling.

The difficulty in confining the mentally insane was demonstrated in a case in the 1970s were a man killed his wife and two children. When he was arrested, psychiatrists determined he was mentally insane and treated him for the next 17 months until his trial. The psychiatrists testified that he was insane during the time of the murders. The judge rendered a verdict of "not guilty by the reason of insanity" and he was committed. Two months later during a required evaluation he was determined to be sane and was released. Eighteen years later after going off his medication and using illegal drugs, he killed his new wife and child.

I suppose that in this case their could possibly have been a law that forces a person that was declared "not guilty by the reason of insanity" of a violent crime be required to get treatment but the mental health service would need to follow him for 18 years through out the US.

dakota44

Meds have indeed come a long way in the area of mental health. I think there is a serious lack of available services.

Leslie

Okay, folks.

First of all, the type of illness that it appears the Arizona shooter had would have been in the early stages of critical onset. Though he may have been a socially awkward or "quirky" adolescent there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to assume he should have been institutionalized or medicated up until very recently. He was escalating but he hadn't been doing this stuff for years and years and years.

Can anybody show me an example of violent behavior prior to the shooting? I'm sorry but it is not illegal to be obnoxious or anti-social. However, most of the people in prison and mental institutions are both obnoxious and anti-social. We don't have predictive policing and I wouldn't want to live in a society that does.

It's so easy to sit here at our computers and say what everybody should have been doing now that we have all of this information at our fingertips. But no one person knew all of this stuff. His life was dynamic and happening in real time. The school didn't know about his different online personas. The police didn't know how he was behaving at home. His parents didn't know he had bought a gun. Paranoid people keep secrets.

There is no behavioral database that can be accessed anytime somebody does something creepy or annoying in order to find out if it's time to lock them in the loony bin. We don't spy on people and keep files so that the minute they finally cross the line we can show up in the night with the straight jackets and needles. Funny though, this is probably exactly what the shooter thought was the case.

Sally Redux

Thanks for the info on Medicaid, Michael.

Leslie, I do agree with you, a young guy being obnoxious and writing 'mayhem' or whatever it was on a paper shouldn't lead to sectioning. The ready availability of guns here does however make vigilance more pressing.

Leslie

Truthfully, the only group that may have a dog in this fight is the gun control lobby. If it hadn't been so easy for him to get a gun he probably would not have been able to hurt so many so quickly. He still could have built a bomb though. But at least it would have been much more difficult. That guy with the big ass knife on the bus in Canada comes to mind.

Rete

You have to take into account who are the people that will create and them implement those mechanisms. Sorry, Dakota, but I don't think I could muster any trust in someone to do this fairly.

I've been researching poor houses the last two weeks and they were nothing more than a new name for an asylum. Horrid conditions in which to live your life and yet better than an actual institution staffed by doctors and nurses.

Yes, it has happened before and I believe it is still happening today in private institutions. Rid the world of corruption and then I might agree with you.

I don't believe that anyone wants to see them suffer needlessly. But institutionalizing and drugging someone just because Joe Blow says the person warrants it is not good enough for me. In addition, not everyone needs to be given drugs or isolation from life or family. Will that mean that every child born with a disability or with down's syndrone will be institutionalized like in the 40's and 50's?

Don't take the high road attitude. You are not the only one concerned but you are the one of the few that wants them all drugged and locked up.

Giantaxe

He would have had to "prove" his disability, which is not straightforward process. Additionally, he would have had to have the motivation to pursue signing up in the first place. There are also requirements regarding the length that you have had the disability. I would not be at all surprised to find he wasn't signed up for Medicaid. It's an interesting aspect of the story, and one which I haven't seen any discussion of in the media.

Leslie

I seriously doubt he had received much if any treatment at all much less been conclusively diagnosed and filed for disability.

meauxna

Good thing too, or traffic on this site would grind to a halt.

I've been following a discussion elsewhere about people who sexually abuse children. The remedies proposed by otherwise sane, sober people has shocked me. There's a group of thinkers who say that locking these guys (it's mostly guys) up, castrating, removing all freedoms, even implanting GPS if we can't keep them locked up, is the only way to go.
It's another form of craziness, but we can't possibly lock everyone up even if that were the solution.

If you go on a crazy in Portland these days, it's highly likely you'll be shot dead in the ensuing police confrontation. This has not proved a positive mental-health-treatment plan. <---hyperbole

How do we all become 'my brother's keeper'?

dakota44

How did this get to me wanting them ALL drugged and locked up? That certainly isn't my position and I never intended it to be so perceived. I suppose the fact that it is an issue fraught with so many pitfalls creates a lot of disagreement and entrenched opposing opinions. Given the number of mentally disturbed people in the country and the limits and failings of our mental health system, I suppose the status quo will continue. As difficult as finding an acceptable solution may be, I still find that to be a sad commentary.

dakota44

I agree with much of this, except that he was more than socially awkward or a quirky adolescent, from what I have read. When a number of class mates in College go to the professor to express that they are afraid of him because of the things he frequently says in class and his behavior and in the wake of numerous complaints as well as numerous confrontations with campus Police, the College finally suspends him and says that they need a letter from a Phsyc. that he is not a danger to himself or others.....that goes beyond quirky and awkward. It does seem that most of his problems began to unfold last February.

"But last year, his classroom conduct began to change. In February, Loughner stunned a teacher by talking about blowing up babies, a bizarre outburst that marked the start of a rapid unraveling for the 22-year old, who is accused of slaying six people and wounding 13, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.
After his first flare-up, campus police decided not to intervene.

"I suggested they keep an eye on him," an officer wrote.

Loughner's on-campus behavior grew increasingly erratic, menacing, even delusional. Fifty-one pages of police reports released Wednesday provided a chilling portrait of Loughner's last school year, which ended in September when he was judged mentally unhinged and suspended by Pima Community College.

In a Sept. 23 campus police report, days before his suspension, an officer called to quiet another one of Loughner's outbursts described him as incomprehensible, his eyes jittery, his head awkwardly tilted.

He very slowly began telling me in a low and mumbled voice that under the Constitution, which had been written on the wall for all to see, he had the right to his 'freedom of thought' and whatever he thought in his head he could also put on paper. ... His teacher 'must be required to accept it' as a passing grade," the officer wrote.

"It was clear he was unable to fully understand his actions."

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/7...rsts.html?pg=2

His rantings, for months, were so delusional and unhinged that it was clear he had serious issues. Was that a predictor of what he would do? Clearly not with any degree of certainty, if at all. But it was daily proof that he needed help. When one of the students in one of his classes, a mature woman, said this about him in emails to a friend, you know he was more than quirky.

Lynda Sorenson, a 52-year-old who shared an algebra class with Loughner, painted a disturbing picture of the suspect in several e-mails to friends.

In one of the notes, provided to the Washington Post, Sorenson wrote:

"We have a mentally unstable person in the class that scares the living crap out of me. He is one of those whose picture you see on the news, after he has come into class with an automatic weapon. Everyone interviewed would say, Yeah, he was in my math class and he was really weird. I sit by the door with my purse handy. If you see it on the news one night, know that I got out fast..."

A community college instructor who taught Tucson shooting suspect Jared Loughner was so disturbed by the student's outbursts in class that he requested Loughner's removal from the course, he told the Washington Post in an interview Sunday.

Ben McGahee, a third-year instructor at Pima Community College, taught Loughner in an elementary algebra class last summer. McGahee said that while Loughner never threatened him directly, he was concerned by his behavior.

"I always felt, you know, somewhat paranoid," McGahee said. "When I turned my back to write on the board, I would always turn back quickly--to see if he had a gun."

McGahee said he had to make several complaints before administrators finally removed Loughner.

"They just said, 'Well, he hasn't taken any action to hurt anyone. He hasn't provoked anybody. He hasn't brought any weapons to class,'" McGahee recalled. "'We'll just wait until he takes that next step.'"

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/...tructor-i.html




So 6 people, including a 9 year old girl died and 12 or 13 others were seriously wounded and a young man is now facing a likely death penalty because there was no mechanism to ensure that he received the mental health care he obviously needed. That still says to me that we are doing something terribly wrong in the area of mental health. Clearly we should be able to find an answer, some answer. I would hope.

Steerpike

And he was able to buy a gun. Just curious ... does anyone know the AZ 'concealed weapon' permit rules (which have opened up significantly recently, from what I understand) - would he have been able to get one, do you think, had he applied?