Earlier, we covered the fact that school's out for summer and kids and skateboards need a place.
Later we went moving right along with a little juxtaposition of cognitive dissonance of single moms in poverty (PDF) and suburban singles bars and why I don't date, but dance as if I do.
Then I decided that -- as is proper form in all good Rhetoric -- I should Digress, with an actual schizothemia, no less, that being "digression by means of a long reminiscence". Yet bracketing that schizothemia, I did stop to mention that nearly ubiquitous functional illiteracy even among college graduates makes it difficult for me to communicate at my own level with others.
I noted disturbing parallels between recurring plot-lines of some very good science fiction and definite historic and horrid incidents, trying to keep the focus on Focus and how people might get rich or powerful from that, and how scruples might not matter to some people. Then, noted in passing, an article that points out that the death-rate from kids on Ritalin is nearly octuple that of accident victims in the same population group.
I then felt it necessary to point out that the Modern Western Way isn't the only culture that deals with small-time recurrent criminals by marginalizing them as mentally ill and then forcing them into "treatment". In Haiti, in part due to their budgetary constraints preventing them from building a prison and jail system as proportionately immense as that of the US, and in part due to the ethnic and cultural origins of the Haitians as well as the history of their arrival on that island, the approach is really disturbingly similar, yet somehow here in the US, we fear the very name of Zombi.
First, before I get started in on anyone else's religious beliefs -- which I suppose I might do in the next segment, when I may mention that you can practice Vodun or Santaria but don't practice it on me -- let me make mine clear: I am what you might call a "non-theological earth-friendly neo-pagan". In a lot of ways, I'm not too far from the Wiccans.
My theology isn't the same as theirs. Indeed, such limited theology as I internalize comes mostly from the JudeoChristian tradition as does the majority of my moral system, but really I am very much a hardcore Deist. If the universe has a creator then that which surrounds us and of which we are a part is an artifact of intention, and in that which is created are clues to the creator, even if those clues aren't stamped with the date of manufacture and a serial number and brand name. To discover the intentions of the creator, study creation. We have tools for that... philosophy, and science.
Yet I believe that it's good to have a periodic and recurrent ceremony of reflection and expression of devotion, and I believe that if the universe has a creator, when I give my devotions and sacrifices, I'll be as close to nature as I may be when I make those devotions. To That which created the stars themselves, all of the space to contain them, the time through which all move, and the laws by which all are governed: to That alone do I give my worship, and my thanks for letting me be a part of it all.
I keep imagining that sooner or later I'll wind up in handcuffs in the back of a squad car, trying to explain wandering around my backyard at midnight on a moonlit night, smoking a cigarette and throwing bread and sloshing beer all over the place. And I keep imagining, in this very bad dream, that I forget to mention the Constitution of the United States, as Amended, and the Constitution of Maryland and the part where it says that a person should worship their creator "as they see fit". And I imagine that somehow I wind up as an unconscious admission to the local jail.
Here, have a video:
The Gazette has an excellent article which details a very worrisome rise in mental illness in the local Jail.
This excerpt pretty much sums it up:
As a therapist at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, she deals with a steadily growing stream of inmates with mental health issues.
In some cases, the facility is like a revolving door. When inmates with mental illnesses are released back into the community, there often is not a strong support system of family or public programs to help them, and they revert to their prior behavior, she said.
The ones where treatment works are not likely to return.
"This is not the most cost-effective way to treat mental illness, and it also is not the most humane," Shaffer said. "This is a jail environment and not a mental hospital."
A new study released earlier this month showed that a growing number of inmates in jails nationwide have serious mental health problems. The study of more than 20,000 men and women inmates by the nonpartisan Council of State Governments' Justice Center and Policy Research Associates found that 14.5 percent of men and 31 percent of the women in jails suffered from serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
"I don't feel overwhelmed, but it saddens me," Shaffer said. "It's not the way we want to treat those with an illness."
This may be looked at in a variety of ways.
Could it be that mentally-ill people are more inclined to criminality than those who aren't -- only for example -- schizophrenic? Research done in past years has found that the mentally ill are no more likely to be criminal than those who don't share that affliction. Indeed, with many classes of mental illness, especially those along the depression axis, it's far more likely that rather than harm another, including by stealing, they'll kill themselves. Imagine that: mentally ill, and they'd rather kill themselves than be a criminal.
Could it be that the population of the jail is really a mirror of the population at-large, and that an increase in the proportion of mentally-ill inmates merely reflects an increase in mental illness in the population at-large? There is some support for this notion, in another article in the Gazette:
While the economy soured, the number of neglect and physical and sexual abuse cases in Montgomery County increased over the last two years, a trend that could continue to worsen, say child welfare officials.
Social workers are responding to more cases involving unattended children, home overcrowding and abuse, said Agnes Leshner, Director of the Montgomery County Department of Child Welfare.
"Unfortunately, what happens is mom and dad are working and leaving the children home alone," Leshner said. "This has lead to our increase in neglect against children reports because the children are babysitting their siblings all hours of the day."
Historically, cases tend to spike in May, Leshner said. In May 2007, child welfare investigators responded to 257 cases, which increased to 290 cases in May 2008. There were 307 cases last month, she said.
Yet there's another, and easily more-believable explanation: that public services out in the community are not reaching their intended clients.
There could be a variety of reasons for that, but two immediately spring to mind.
Either (or possibly some degree of both) there is insufficient funding to serve the needs of that community, or the services offered -- or the conditions of the offers or way the services are offered -- are so unacceptable to the clientele that they would rather decline the services.
As discussed elsewhere, I am about as crazy as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and for about the same reasons.
Long long ago, Montgomery County issued a contract for outpatient mental health-care services to some corporation constituted to that end. I was having problems that seemed to me might indicate depression. Without any real testing, the contractor's physician prescribed a fairly low dose of a fairly strong anti-psychotic drug. This did nothing whatsoever to treat the underlying thyroid disorder.
Elsewhere, far from Montgomery's sway, another doctor did actually do tests, and prescribed thyroid suppliments, and wow did I get better, very quickly indeed. I became the person I really was, rather than the victim of an increasing shortage of hormones.
Interestingly enough, about one-third of people treated with anti-depressant medications will say almost the exact same thing.
But what about the approximately two thirds of affected persons for whom antidepressants are ineffective?
All I know is that about 100-percent of people with hypothyroidism will find that the appropriate dosage if thyroid is effective.
I can reasonably estimate that about 100 percent of people treated with antidepressants or antipsychotics for thyroid deficiency will not get better.
Quackery and malpractice do not constitute treatment, or at least don't constitute medicine.
The Astute Reader -- those who aren't among the two thirds of college graduates who are not deeply literate, according to the National Endowment of the Arts and other institutions of actually literate academics -- doubtless is wondering what the hell this has to do with increasing numbers of the mentally ill filling up the county jails.
Look at it this way: With a schizothemia -- a long digression involving a personal reminiscence -- I am giving you an example. You may, or may not, wish to draw from me arguing by anectdote, from the individual to the general. That's very fallacious if you include it in an argument, but you can always go do some surveys and take polls to see if that one individual reminiscence, or elements thereof, are experiences common to other individuals.
But wait, I'm not done yet.
To continue to digress -- schizothemia aren't that unless they're long -- let me mention that when I returned from the place where I had finally gotten the right diagnosis, I was destitute and dirt poor.
One nice thing about Montgomery County: generally speaking, social programs were well-funded. This was a center of civilization and not far from being a center of socialism.
So, trying to get on my feet and into my own place, I ran into a certain problem.
Montgomery County had integrated its social services such as mental health-care into their general poverty outreach systems.
What this meant was that if they had a record of you ever being a recipient of mental health-care, until and unless you were receiving mental health-care, no other services were available to you.
Trying to get food, they told me to get the people contracted to provide mental health-care to sign off on a form.
Trying to get medical care for illness or injury, I was told to get the people contracted to provide mental health-care to sign off on a form.
Trying to get on a list for low-income assisted housing, I was told to get the people contracted to provide mental health-care to sign off on a form.
Trying to get into vocational training, I was told to get the people contracted to provide mental health-care to sign off on a form.
Talking to the mental health care contractors, I was told that I would take their medication, and give blood weekly to prove compliance, before they would sign off on these forms that everyone else requested.
They prescribed Zyprexa, which has since been implicated in problems with diabetes, obesity, and sudden death as well as other things that are less than fun. In particular, it's noted for the number of people who go psychotic, or more psychotic, and also go violent after taking it.
When I took it, within 72 hours I was, um, not to put too fine a point on it, out of my goddamned mind. At about 6 days into it, I was, to put it mildly, contemplating violence. And then the newspapers were suddenly full of the news that about a mile down the street, some poor bastard on Zyprexa had axe-murdered his family, reportedly under the delusion that they were vampires.
Considering that I was thinking about the same thing, and taking the same free quack pills, I flushed them down the toilet and probably saved the lives of my entire family, including myself.
Now, years later, I take only thyroid, and I do in fact drink beer, and I smoke cigarettes. Other than that I don't do drugs.
I saved my money, constantly upgraded my computers and internet connection, taught myself the bare bones of UNIX, and educated myself to the point where I got hired by a company or three or five where I worked under some of the best people in the industry, and whatever I hadn't taught myself, they helped me learn.
That is how you deal with poverty. That is how you deal with mental illness. That is how you give people a hand up, not just a handout.
You leave people alone who are doing no harm. You don't give them drugs that they don't need, drugs that -- at least in my case -- cause a mixture of mood-swings, psychotic ideation, and murderous intentions. You feed them if they are hungry, and if you can get them work, do that. If you can help them learn something that will get them paid better at their job, while keeping them in that job, you do that.
What do you NOT do?
You don't tell them that they can't be fed, nor housed, nor work, unless they're taking antidepressants that do nothing for 2/3rd of people taking them, or put them on semi-experimental antipsychotics that have an immense and nasty number of side-effects which include a deepening of psychosis and predilection to eruptions of violence.
And you don't tell them to take dope when you know that dope isn't what they need, and that your previous malpractice was just epic in its gross negligence and incompetence.
Or maybe you do... if you're trying to hide that mistake by mandating that they can either go mad under inappropriate medication and kill themselves -- the main witness to the malpractice -- and do it quickly, or starve slowly and homeless while being refused job after job and all opportunities for training.
All I can say is that if anyone else has had comparable experiences from Montgomery's mental healthcare and social services contractors, it's likely that they too have decided to let nature take its course. And as some people are teetering on the edge, making that decision could land them in jail as the actual madhouses are full and have been for years.
Or perhaps the County contractors were so odious that people went without care, but desperation forced them to crime, shoplifting to survive, and when arrested for trying to eat, the contractors exerted their long reach to and throughout the County systems, and added yet another statistic -- one who refused their services -- to the long list of reasons why they need more money.
Because, after all, if those programs had more money, less crazy people would wind up in jail.
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