Let's face it, we want all our problems solved - for free.

The woman who pushed the Hindu man to his death in front of a subway train appears to have severe mental health problems.  Surprise, surprise. 

There are a lot of people like this out there, ticking time bombs that roam our streets filled with anger, or strange notions, often completely out of touch with reality.  They used to be locked up and warehoused, but that was expensive and there were a lot of abuses associated with the system.  But whenever one of these sad, deluded people commit some atrocity we hear an outpouring of anger from people who demand that the government do something to protect us from those nuts.  Commit them, jail them, treat them, protect us.  Just read some of the comments to the news article I linked to above.

Heh, heh.  Funny, isn't it?  I never hear anyone say, hospitalize then and treat them, help them cope, treat them humanely - even if it means we must pay higher taxes.

Let's be honest. We are not a compassionate society, we are a stingy, short-sighted, "bottom-line" society: government must keep us safe, protect us, and solve our problems - for free. Don't come asking us for tax dollars. Don't regulate us, don't expect us to do anything or give up anything, just solve our problems - knowing that you can't because you don't have the money...and knowing we will ultimately blame you for your certain failures, ridicule you, and then cut your funding even more, ensuring even more failure. But DON'T even THINK about raising our taxes!

--Trakker

Comments

[horsec]

Don't blame the mentally ill for society's problems

Reprise this, My son is schizophrenic. The ‘reforms’ that I worked for have worsened his life. By Paul Gionfriddo, Published: October 15

[Trakker]

I have a lot of questions about mental illness, mainly because it is often so hard to diagnose and treat, unlike physical illnesses like heart disease or diabetes which are well understood and usually respond to treatment in a predictable manner.

Do we have more mental illness in the U.S. than other industrialized nations? If so, why? In any case, I think we as a society should fund better research into the causes and treatment of mental illness and provide free of low cost treatment centers and hospitals for those who need help. We should also do our best to remove the stagmatization of those who are ill.

Why? Because those who are mentally ill are often living in pure hell, and those who love them live in agony and fear of what harm their loved ones might do to themselves and others.

Yes, the libertarians are going to scream about socialism and the government stealing their hard earned tax dollars and insist that other people's problems are THEIR OWN problems, not society's. Well, I'm sick of those retrograde neaderthals who want to live back when everyone was on their own and only the strongest or smartest (or the meanest) survived.

[Dan D. Doty]

I seem to remember that it was progressive in the early 70's who thought it was cruel to institutionalize people with severe mental illness. When people asked where all the mentally ill who go once the institution were closed, the Progressives said that the community at large would take care of them.