7 Replies to “Sanctuary and Asylum [Dan Collins]”

1. Carin says:

   April 23, 2007 at 6:33 am

   Interesting. There is a woman of dubious mental health living with her mom across the street from me.  She lost custody of her children (father took them, and never lets her see them) last fall, and she appears to be spiraling downward. While her family watches. She is definitely paranoid, but I hope not dangerous.

   Yesterday, I asked her how she was doing, and she said “I think my children are DEAD”, turned and walked away.

2. Lost My Cookies says:

   April 23, 2007 at 6:47 am

   “I think my children are DEAD”,

   Hey, that’s exactly what I said to my wife after I found a whole box of Cheerios spilled on the newly finished hardwood floors in the kitchen and ground into dust by the marching of four pairs of inconsiderate little feet.

   I’m beginning to think this Alec Baldwin guy ain’t so bad.

3. PattyAnn says:

   April 23, 2007 at 7:22 am

   Thanks for the link to the article, Dan. Interesting background. The Kellermans are two of my favorite writers.

4. Dan Collins says:

   April 23, 2007 at 7:27 am

   Hey, PattyAnn.  Anything for you.

5. Darleen says:

   April 23, 2007 at 7:56 am

   I was in graduate school, studying clinical psychology when they began shutting down the asylums. The place was California, the time was the early 1970s, and “they” were an unprecedented confederation of progressives, libertarians and fiscal conservatives.

   Because crazy people rarely showed up for treatment voluntarily, and when they did, the treatment milieu consisted of queuing up interminably at Thorazine Kiosks.

   And now we had a Homeless Problem.

   And everyone was astonished.

   Yep. The only thing left out of that quick background on the era was that it happened when Ronald Reagan was CA’s Governor and he (and Republicans) have forever been held responsible for the “homeless problem” rather than the ACLU who was up to its briefs in representing the “free the inmates” advocacy groups.

6. J. Peden says:

   April 23, 2007 at 8:30 am

   [Amen, Darleen]

   Back at the time the “institutionalized” were mainstreamed [many being psychotics who needed medication] I also thought the decision was nuts – based, as it was, upon magical thinking, including not wanting to admit the existence of the severely mentally ill to begin with.

   Outpatient follow-up of these people was just not going to work, and people with psychosis are often not able to take care of themselves in the most basic ways unless they are correctly medicated, which simply can’t be left up to them alone.

   So here we are down the same road further where now Faux Liberal gun-controllists again ruin the possible sense of anything they get their hands on by creating magic gun-free-zone wonderlands, wanting to disarm us en masse, and otherwise claiming that we shouldn’t defend ourselves, either as individuals or as a nation.

   It looks to me like Cho was most likely a paranoid schizophrenic whose medication[?] kept him “normal” enough to be undetectable on average and able to commit this crime, instead of floridly dysfunctional. If so, then outpatient follow-up did not work.

   But the prevailing story is that Cho was “depressed” and on anti-depressants. I don’t think he was, but if he was on anti-depressants or we don’t find out what he was on, then anyone who “is or has ever been” on anti-depressants had better start worrying about their gun rights, once Faux Liberal delusionaries get ginned up to “help” us once again.

7. McGehee says:

   April 23, 2007 at 8:52 am

   In 1980 then-First Lady Mrs. History’s Greatest Monster came to Sacramento to campaign for her husband’s re-election, and one of the tropes she trotted out against Reagan was that he closed down the mental institutions.

   Choose your punchline, there are so many.

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