As many of you know, my son Aidan suffers from Childhood Onset Schizophrenia. It’s nice that there are interest groups who will defend his right to have his psychosis express itself:
On June 20, 2006, William Bruce approached his mother as she worked at her desk at home and struck killing blows to her head with a hatchet.
Two months earlier, William, a 24-year-old schizophrenic, had been released from Riverview Psychiatric Center in Augusta, Maine, against the recommendations of his doctors. “Very dangerous indeed for release to the community,” wrote one in William’s record.
But the doctor’s notes also show that William’s release was backed by government-funded patient advocates. According to medical records, the advocates — none of them physicians — appear to have fought for his right to refuse treatment, to have coached him on how to answer doctors’ questions and to have resisted the medical staff’s efforts to contact his parents. As one doctor wrote, William told him his advocates believed he is “not a danger, and should be released.”
William’s father, Joe Bruce, obtained his son’s medical records from Riverview eight months after the killing. “I read through the records and I just remember crying all the way through,” Joe Bruce says. “My God, these people knew exactly what they were sending home to us.”
Helen Bailey, one of William’s advocates, declined to discuss the details of his case but says the handling of it was consistent with her professional duties. “My job is to get the patient’s voice into the mix where decisions are made,” says Ms. Bailey, an attorney with Maine’s Disability Rights Center in Augusta. “No matter how psychotic, that voice is still worthy of being heard. I have not had the person who is so out of it that they can’t communicate what they want.” She added that the records reflect the doctors’ perception of what happened.*
Coached him how to answer questions, because that is how one makes sure that somebody’s voice is heard. Are they remorseful? Please, they were just doing their jobs. What’s a little statutory rape and murder, anyway, compared with the right of teenagers to keep information from their parents and the right of psychosis to express itself? Everybody knows that often real parents aren’t kind and just enough.
Note: this is a story from last summer that I just found via the TAC’s newsletter, The Catalyst
*which undoubtedly deprive her of her voice in the matter
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is attitude at the root of much of our present difficulties.
In Texas the Republicans led by Rick “Rape Ranch” Perry are hell bent on closing several State homes and relocating mental patients back into the community and/or into community-based half-way homes. They think it will save the State money. No, that’s their sales pitch, I’m not kidding.
I don’t care who they are. They should be institutionalized.
Thor, if a patient can choose, or not choose, to remain in a facility … what’s the point of keeping them open? Michigan went through this years ago – John Engler closed a bunch of mental home facilities, and people bitched about what all the mentally ill were going to do.
There was a mentally ill woman named Stella in Detroit. She was really crazy. She hung out in Greektown. She’d go off on psychotic rages right there on the street. She lived on the street. Except when she’d get picked up and put in a mental clinic for a bit. They’d put her on meds, and she’d be ok, so she’d THEN choose to leave (own free will) … and end up back on the streets yelling at the poor suburbanites trying to have a little saganaki.
I mean, if my tax dollars are going to pay for mental clinics, I want the dangerous/unstable LOCKED up. Those facilities don’t simply exist to give people jobs.
The doctors are just as bad, and there is nothing you can do about it. Gotta save money you know. There’s a good chance my dad would be alive today were it not for the well intentioned and never accountable.
Thor, this is New York. Texas is late joining the trend. As far as I’m concerned, these “patient advocates” should be personally and professionally liable for what they unleash on the community.
B-B-But, don’t you know? Any government doo-gooder, busybody, who is saving me from myself obviously knows infinately more than the professional who’s assessment and program they are contradicting and meddling in. I mean, after all, these people have liberal arts degrees!; they obviously know more than physicians..
This is one of the reasons that we have kindergarten teachers empowered to decide wether kids have ADD or ADHD and therefore need psychotropic drugs; funny how a high percentage of them need this treatment. Could it be that as a society we’ve forgotten how exhuberant and rambunctions children can be when they have poor home training? or perhaps the teacher simply cannot hold their attention nor garner their respect…
And if they need to lie and connive to achieve their desired ends; Fuck it!, the guiding paridigm is “By any means necessary”…
Get used to it folks; if national health care is allowed to come to pass, there’ll be clerks bureaucrats dictating medical procedure, and deciding not only if you need treatment, but if you are living your life right at all…
My point in pointing out that the rethuglidums were leading the way in Texas was my undying belief that it takes cooperation between idiots on the Right and the Left to create a total confuckulation, which is how I’d describe what happened at the non-rape rape ranch.
The persons in the State homes in Texas are there because they don’t have relatives who can take care of them, and, as noted by Carin, many are eligible to come and go anyway so if they are there then they must want to be there.
The article I read cited a woman in her late seventies whose daughter suffered from not only from mental disabilities but severe physical disabilities. The state called this mother to tell her she’d need to come pick-up her daughter, who was in her sixties, because on such-and-such date the State home was closing. The mother was quoted as saying her own medical problems and age wouldn’t allow her to care for her daughter the way her daughter required or deserved. The state employee responded by offering essentially free patient delivery, since their was nothing else he/she could offer.
It’s a confuckulation.
trace a lot of this back to the ACLU during the days of CA Gov. Ronald Reagan. See, psychotic people should have the RIGHT to sleep on the street, urinate in public, camp in public parks and harass passerbys.
And newspapers than can bring up the Growing Problem of Homeless during Republican administrations (portraying the homeless and hard-working poor who were at the mercy of evil rich) and completely ignoring them during Democrat admins.
Bob Reed
Kindergarten teachers are 100% females, majority educated under modern universities that look at little boys as creatures to cured of poisonous Patriarchal masculinity. By golly, if they can’t sit still for more than 20 minutes then MEDICATE ’em!
Leave it to Darleen to reduce any topic to a Hannity-addled partisan nut-bake.
“In Texas the Republicans led by Rick “Rape Ranch†Perry are hell bent on closing several State homes and relocating mental patients back into the community and/or into community-based half-way homes. They think it will save the State money. No, that’s their sales pitch, I’m not kidding.”
Isn’t this along the same lines as President Reagan advocating, and implementing, the closing of asylums in the 80’s? I’d rather the mentally ill be in homes, where they could be looked at and taken care of, than on the streets being homeless. One of Reagan’s biggest mistakes, imo.
Sorry, I missed Darlene’s comment at 9.
What is this “Rape Ranch” thing..? Does it have to do with the polygamous sect that where teens were marrying older men..?
I’ve never heard of a rape ranch, that’s all…
I think that was a Spinal Tap song.
Comment by thor on 1/22 @ 8:54 am #
Just be thankful, thor.
You’re out on the street.
It’s when the State of Texas kidnapped those moms and kids from that Mormon commune under guise of it being a “rape ranch” (Sean Hannity’s words).
“Comment by Bob Reed on 1/22 @ 9:13 am #
What is this “Rape Ranch†thing..?”
Another of hor’s fantasies.
I do not know the situation in Texas. I do know Detroit has community based homes (one is right behind my Detroit house, which I still own – ouch)- and they seem to be a pretty good deal for those appropriately placed. I would say we need a two-tier system. “homes” for those not a threat to the community, and mandatory institutionalization for those who are.
My aunt took care of my manic (REALLY manic, at times he appeared schizophrenic, but I don’t believe he was) cousin until he passed away in his 50’s. Life for him was definitely better living with family. But I realize not everyone can do that.
O/t – but this same aunt is now taking care of her other son who has MS. She’s in her 80’s, and he’s reaching end stage. Hard life. But, no one was ever promised a rose garden, and I’m sure she wouldn’t have it any other way. MS cousin’s wife has basically abandoned him.
Carin, I agree with you completely on the need for a two-tiered system…
thor,
It’s my understanding that Texas, much like Colorado, Arizona, and Utah tacitly tolerate polygamy owing to the religious nature of these family groups. I admit though, that I don’t know enough about it…
But if that had been the case, I believe the Texas authorities were wrong to invade those folks private property. And, since they’ve been returned home, I can only assume the Texas courts thought the same thing! That and some woman in Colorado dropped the dime on them under questionable circumstances…
This is wonderful! All patients should have a voice! I hope this lady gets a post in the Obama administration. She could really help change the perception Americans have with mental patients!
YAY!
As part of my job I transported crazy people from a state institution to their hearing at a hospital in Seattle. The people were usually medicated. We were armed and we handcuffed these folks. Then we were told we were violating their rights. They would go into a room for their hearing and we were not allowed to go in. I used to hope that the crazy folks would stomp the shit out of the judge and the attornies.
Ah, but in TX, at least if approached by a crazy man waving a hatchet (thor? shouldn’t that be a hammer?), I’m allowed to use a gun to protect myself or others. New York, not so much.
tacitly tolerate polygamy owing to the religious nature of these family groups.
No, they tacitly tolerate polygamy because of the high cost (PR and otherwise) of prosecuting it. You have to arrest and jail the parents, and then what do you do with all those kids? The social services can’t handle the sudden influx of a couple hundred kids who don’t understand the modern world except that it’s Evil.
They used to raid the polig clans in the 1950s but public outcry (what about the children?) and the aforementioned shock to social services led to the blind eye being turned to the practice.
As for the “voice” of those afflicted with psychosis, how do you know which voice it is? The voice of the psychotic or one of the tormentor voices?
The real problem is that anti-psychotic meds are effective at stifling the hallucinations, but they’re hell otherwise. Most schizophrenics prefer the psychosis to the “thick as a brick” experience of the meds. Furthermore, when they’re on the meds and feel sane, some figure that they’re all better and don’t need the meds anymore.
I’m on agreement with thor (a rarity) but without the rudeness. Budget-cutting Republicans in some states have formed a toxic combination with liberal let-the-patient-decide-on-the-meds types. There HAS to be a better way of monitoring the seriously mentally ill than just fighting the doctors reflexively in every case. And money must be spent for appropriate mental care for the severely ill.
Theme song for this thread!
Dan,
I did not know about your son. I am truly sorry to hear it and I hope that someday something can be done to help him be rid of his affliction. As a parent, I can’t imagine how you deal with this, other than day to day. I think that you and your wife must be very strong people with very big hearts to carry on and not give up on him. I wish you the best in that regard.
Unfortunately the move towards de-institutionalization has been with us for some time now. Back in the mid-70’s I worked in a mental hospital for 18 months. I could tell you some stories, but even then there was a major movement to get people out of the institutions and into the community.
There is real merit to this when done correctly, with those whom it will help. The hell of it is, as usual, the dim-witted one size fits all approach taken by the government bureaucracies that run these places and the phony compassion vampires that suck a living from them. Many who were totally incapable of coping outside were released with no concern for their well being once out of the institutions (e.g. the state’s custody) and with no real follow up either by the state or these so-called good Samaritans. This sad story is just another example of misguided egotistical & stupid people trying to play the savior with other people’s lives and then washing their hands of the matter when things go wrong. A story all too familiar these days.
#19 Carin,
I’m sorry to hear about your cousin with MS as it is what my wife has. I am curious about the phrase “end stage” as MS is not considered a fatal disease in an of itself. It can be very disabling and other complications from it and treatment could shorten lifespan but not usually.
Sorry, it’s just a bugaboo with me as when my wife was diagnosed, a well meaning friend told her it was fatal and she spiraled into a deep depression over that comment, thinking her doctors were not telling her the truth about her illness.
Your Aunt is a fine woman. A mother to be admired.
As someone who has worked witht the disablied and individuals with psychiatric problems. I can report that this type of “advocay” happens all the time. The families are kept in the dark. People who should not be making decitions for themselves are making life and death dections all because “everyone is an individual. The reason they are getting help is because they can’t make their own decisions. Its a very politically correct envirnoment. The best people leave because they get burned out dealing with politically correct people who thinks the world is full of skittles and rainbow. They talk about indiviudal rights etc. but have never worked in a mental ward.
I say “end stage” because he’s becoming weaker and more infirm. I know MS doesn’t kill. He was diagnosed a long time ago- and for a long time he didn’t let it affect him or his independence. Now, though, he’s limited to his bed and can barely use his arms. Stays in nursing homes are becoming more frequent and longer, and when he’s at home he has pretty much around the clock nursing.
The one thing he can do is talk on the phone, and he recently started calling me. He’s a Republican surrounded by liberals, so we usually have fun conversations.
dicentra
not to derail the thread, but unless there are multiple state marriage certificates there is no “polygamy” … and splinter LDS fundies are no more engaging in polygamy than the hippie communes of the 60’s.
Why does he not come here, Carin? Perhaps some of us here could share the conversation.
And Tim P, thanks.
I don’t think he can use the computer much anymore, Darleen.
I wish your cousin well. Hope springs eternal that there will someday be a cure but at least there are treatments nowadays, unlike 10,15 years ago.
Carin,
Dan asked the question, but I’ll add, maybe hook up the ‘puter with voice recognition software?
erm, I mean Dan.
I’m kinda tired tonight.
He’s been diagnosed for (maybe) almost 25 years, and I’m sure there are much better early stage treatments now than there was then.
Since no one has mentioned Thomas Szasz’ name yet, I presume the real political history (not the obligatory BDS) has somehow slipped away. De-institutionalization was the biggest (so far) victory of large-L libertarianism, a response to a governmental horror already forgotten. It was in “Reason” and everything. The crusade drew pretty equally from left and right, and both major parties. Involuntary and summary commitments (my, how the penumbra of that word has changed) were so common right through the 60’s that many families used state hospitals in place of rehab centers or rest homes. In the good old days, you could draw a lifetime sentence for being an incorrigible youth, not getting along with your siblings (much more common when inheritances were involved), or just generally being old and in the way. Think Medicaid gaming, with a much nastier edge to it.
Many, many people were literally freed from unjuried prison by the acts which gave mental patients a voice. Of course, legal abuses cut both ways, and Menckenian justice was swift in coming–the people got what they voted for, good and hard. States and their psychiatric establishments, accused of being complicit in some pretty heavy injustice, seemed to delight in clearing the yard in the 70’s. It’s hard to say, a full generation later, whether personal rights or public security were well served by that movement. It is true, though, that a lot of people were institutionalized who need not have been, and that the intended part of the reforms were one of the few anti-government victories of that era.
Comatus, the question is whether these people have expertise greater than that of the physicians’ and concern for the welfare of the afflicted greater than that of their parents’, and my belief is that it is unlikely to be the case either way. I was in court once over a traffic issue, and heard a judge ask an attorney whether insulin was a stimulant or a depressant. It was . . . depressing.
I’m beginning to think there’s a concerted assault going on against all people who act responsibly in any way, shape or form. Homeowners who pay their mortgage, doctors who treat their patients conscientiously, CIA interrogators doing their job successfully, parents raising their kids the best way they know how, people who work hard at their jobs and want to hold on to them, people who make a lot of money, people who manage to obtain good medical insurance for themselves and their families through their own hard work, and a president who kept his citizens safe for seven years. And all the time they’re attacking, the assailants describe their behavior with Orwellian terms like “responsibility” and “compassion” and “fairness” and “hope” and “change.” It’s enough to make you weep.
May God bless and keep you and your family, Dan.
(sigh) Oh, I agree; just pointing out how “we” brought this on “ourselves.” It’s the sad spectacle of the Three Branches bartering in human lives, with no skin in the game. Penitentiaries, asylums, and high schools were all founded in the same decade–all with the same good intentions. For a while, to an extent, all three worked; their social architecture ended up even more similar than their physical plant. Don’t you wonder what a non-governmental solution would have looked like.