Should we have shut down those state psychiatric hospitals?

Some of those facilities were likely horrible. Now you often have the inmates living in the streets. Is that better for them or for the cities where they are?

It would cost incredible amounts of money to provide decent treatment for all the mentally ill and it costs incredible amounts of money to cope with the homeless. Everyone has their own opinion.
 
When these care places were closed, the very valuable lands were sold. Inside may have restrictive, but there 3 meals, a bed, and care. Now these same people had access to street drugs and no place to stay or don’t want to stay where there are rules. If they commit a crime, it’s excused because they couldn’t help themselves.
 
I grew up in Southern Ohio. Gallipolis was the home of the first American facility designed to tread epileptics and the "epileptic insane". Generally referred to as "Ohio Home for Epileptics", It opened in 1893. Within a few years it had almost 1,000 patients. By 1950, it was renamed Gallipolis State Institute and reduced in size, and finally in 1979, it became the Gallipolis Development Center, and is a much, much smaller operation. It is basically a nursing home for 80 folks or so who are also mentally ill.

The attached article has a lot of details, and what I see is that the debate about treating the mentally ill is not a new one, or an easy one.

Ohio Home for Epileptics
 
I have always thought that if those hospitals were still around,
they were a deterrent to petty criminals, who were threatened
with being, "Sectioned", if they kept up their life of crime.

Being put into one of those places is a stigma, here at least,
but they boast about being in prison, prisons are like hotels
to some people.

Bring back the Psychiatric Hospitals and use them properly.

Mike.
 
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Since they closed down some over here, all they have managed to do is add to the homeless people on the street.
It's absolutely terrible, the institutions that remain are overcrowded, and mostly occupied by drug addicts, who use the facilities as a get-out-of-jail-free card.

I worked as a Psychiatric nurse for 20 years, it was somewhat dangerous and challenging ( due to understaffing) but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now they are releasing criminals who can no longer be housed in jails due to their dementia, old age patients, and mentally ill
patients under a huge umbrella called mental health, into one institution.

To make things worse, these institutions are manned by AINs(Assistants in Nursing) who have completed a 6-week course.
They are lucky to have 4 RN across 4 wards of 24 patients each.

Rant over.
 
Some of the institutions were horrible and some were good, Why they closed them all instead of just fixing the bad ones, I'll never understand.
People with severe mental illness need care. We wouldn't turn someone with cancer or heart disease out on the streets because there was once a bad cancer nurse like Nurse Ratchet.
 
The old facilities either needed to be updated or completely rebuilt. We have very few mental hospitals left in Ohio compared to what we did have & those left are full. Sadly, these people end up in jail & no one in the jail has the space needed for them let alone to be able to give them the specific care they need.

I know it's a lot of money, but we need to build new facilities that are purpose-built to handle the mentally ill. We also need to take the "half-way houses" out of neighborhoods & place them on the edge of these facilities on the same property. It would make them easier to manage a person when there is a problem.

We had several apartments on the edge of various neighborhoods that had a live-in manager for each. When these people would not take their medication & the manager couldn't handle them, we received the calls to do it. Sometimes they'd listen to the officers & behave & other time times they wouldn't. When that happened, they were a danger to themselves & any one else around them.

I seen it first hand in the early 80s when it started & what happened when these people were kicked out to make it on their own on the streets. They had no place to live, no food & no medical treatment for either physical or mental needs. In winter, a few came into our county jail lobby at night to stay warm.

One city at that time would go around & pick up the homeless when the temps were around 0° F or when the weather turned real bad, take them to their city jail for the night & then in the morning would release them when the sun was up. They got fed & at least for a few hours had a safe place to sleep. No one could even think of doing that today.

This isn't a very humane way to care for people who are unable to take care of themselves because of mental issues. I think it would be karma for those who started this BS to experience what these mental patients went & continue to go through.

"Personal Freedom", as @officerripley said, was the excuse for the system to be dismantled. It just needed to be fixed ... it still does.
 
mrstime said:
Ronald Reagan closed down the hospitals for the people with Down Syndrome and other problems. My aunt worked in one and every one in the hospital was her baby and she of course lost her job but she hated Reagan because her babies ended up on the streets!
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Yep, that's who I referred to above. (How he's become such a "saint" to some, I'll never understand. :unsure: )
 
No. They should have been reformed, though. I know for a fact the state-funded ones were shut down to save money.

I was a psychiatric nurse at a Colorado state hospital for the Developmentally Disabled (aka, mentally retarded) when some state representatives came in for a day-long tour and to ask each of us some questions.

One of the questions was "What has your client, Mr. Jones, learned (while living in the facility)?"

Well, Mr. Jones wasn't capable of learning anything, so....

Has this client learned to use a payphone?
Has this client learned to brush her teeth?
Has this client learned to cook?

The answers were mostly No, of course. So the state justified the closures by saying it was a waste of taxpayer money to try and teach the unteachable. :oops:
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Do you think it was the right thing to do by shutting down those state psychiatric hospitals?
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In the UK we have a housing crisis, and a good deal of the cause is that we sold off our social housing to people and didn't replace it.

Your question is similar. That is, if they were terrible place, of course they should have been closed. BUT - what's the new plan? To close them without a sufficient strategy to support the people that need it is ridiculous. And that's what happened. Politicians too rarely bother to figure out the ramifications of their vote winning policies. Either fix them, knock them down and build new ones, or whatever. But I don't think having them live on the street was a good choice.
 
They were nearly all closed down here years ago, because
they were in prime locations, with acres of green grass
and trees all around, the Government got top money for
each one sold, most that I heard about were bought by
banks, or other financial companies, like insurance.

Now there are very few left and they are in towns or cities,
there is one, or maybe two that are still used as prisons for
the criminally insane, the Yorkshire Ripper, died in one of
them, several months ago, it is always killers who are sent
there, no room for other repeat offenders.

Mike.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Do you think it was the right thing to do by shutting down those state psychiatric hospitals?
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I don't know. I never had a relative or a friend in one so I know nothing about what they were really like and what went on inside them. On the other hand it's heartbreaking and sometimes scary to see mentally ill people out on the streets with no place to go when they so obviously need food shelter and medicine.
 
officerripley said:
Yep, that's who I referred to above. (How he's become such a "saint" to some, I'll never understand. :unsure: )
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Hey! I don't think Reagan was a "saint." I have him on some of my "Death Valley Days" DVDs. He was a cowboy actor there. If you don't believe me get copies of "Death Valley Days", Seasons 13 and 14.

Reagan was really right winged and called the Russians, the "Evil Empire." The Russians like Richard Nixon and even Johnson but they sure didn't like Reagan. You wouldn't either if he called you "EVIL."
 
Murrmurr said:
I was a psychiatric nurse at a Colorado state hospital for the Developmentally Disabled (aka, mentally retarded) when some state representatives came in for a day-long tour and to ask each of us some questions.

One of the questions was "What has your client, Mr. Jones, learned (while living in the facility)?"

Well, Mr. Jones wasn't capable of learning anything, so....

Has this client learned to use a payphone?
Has this client learned to brush her teeth?
Has this client learned to cook?

The answers were mostly No, of course. So the state justified the closures by saying it was a waste of taxpayer money to try and teach the unteachable. :oops:
Click to expand...
...and now Mr. Jones is out living on the street and he STILL can't use a phone, brush his teeth or cook. Except now he HAS to. At least, until someone kills him for his jacket.
 
officerripley said:
I don't know how many in my state have been shut down, but back in the 80s our governor was instrumental in getting a law passed to make it harder to get somebody put in one of those places. Which thus increased the homelessness. (All of course done in the name of "personal freedom", dontcha know.)
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Called ''Care in the Community'' here... which community they think is qualified to care for these people is anyone's guess.. but the community at large are in Danger from many of these people because they are free to walk the streets, and abuse drink and drugs...
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Do you think it was the right thing to do by shutting down those state psychiatric hospitals?
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No. When California did it the residents were moved to halfway houses in the cities where they were to receive help and medication in their evolution to a normal life. Didn’t work. Couldn't take the rules, so they left for the freedom of life on the streets and alleys. My son-in-law was a San Francisco cop. He was supplied with a stock of free room vouchers that supplied the homeless with a free room and roof over their heads. He was very frustrated by his inability to give them away. Today, watch out for turds on some San Francisco sidewalks, and if you visit a popular tourist site and value the glass in your windows please don’t leave a bag or package visible on a seat.
San Francisco Sees 3,000 Car Break-Ins in 1 Month; 'It's Out of Control'
 
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