(12-11-2024, 04:24 PM)mikesez Wrote:

(12-11-2024, 10:56 AM)americus 2.0 Wrote: This is a great deal more complicated than people think it is. You don't just walk into a mental health facility and say you have a family member who needs help and they're welcomed with open arms. Far from it. You can see a shrink on the regular and have an 'episode' and be hard pressed to be admitted into an inpatient facility. And that's if you have insurance. If you don't have insurance it takes an act of God in order to get treatment. 

100% of the time the first thing they do is change your meds if you're on any because they assume that's the problem. If you aren't taking any they put you on whatever they think you should be on without even talking to you first. They get you 'stable,' which usually takes 72 hours for reasons unknown to me, then they cut you loose. If you have insurance they might keep you longer. There is no actual care for these folks. 

My uncle ended up committing suicide because he couldn't get the help he desperately needed.

72 hours in an inpatient institution may be enough time for most, but they need regular outpatient checkups afterwards.  In my book someone with a newly diagnosed mental illness is going to need months to "stabilize" to the point where they only need check ins a couple of times a year.

*Sigh*

72 hours doesn't do anything even close to stabilizing a person who is already on meds. All psychiatric meds have side effects and withdrawal symptoms, some quite severe, so when you go into a facility and they change your meds not only will your brain and body start to feel withdrawals from those meds, but they'll feel the side effects from the new ones. 

The person that isn't already on meds has a better chance of being stabilized but unless they follow-up with a doctor after they're released or go through an outpatient program it's temporary. Can you guess how many folks actually do this? Not as many as you think, especially if they're homeless, live in a shelter, or were in the psych facility against their will, i.e. Baker Acted. 

As for the newly diagnosed? Depending on where they were diagnosed they're not going to get anything remotely close to stabilized. 

The lack of mental health care in this country should seriously concern more people than it does. It doesn't just affect the victims of mass shootings, subway riders and road rage victims. It affects your neighbors, the kids your kid goes to school with, your doctor, your co-workers, etc., and all of their families, friends and others they have contact with. 

It's a bigger problem and more serious than Covid ever was or will be because no one who can do anything meaningful about it lifts a finger to do so.

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