Passenger Trains > NYC begins hospitalization of non-violent mentally ill people

New York City mayor Eric Adams has issued orders for social workers, Emergency Medical Services, and police to remove and secure persons who appear unable to care for themselves, even if they do not appear to be an immediate threat to others.   Existing city policy allows apprehension of people who do appear to be acting in a violent manner toward others. The latter policy has been used in the subways, buses, and streets.  The new policy appears to allow the continued detention of people, previous policy released them back to the streets. Many people cycle in and out of the mental health system for decades.

Advocates for the homeless and mentally ill argue this will do little to solve the problem of mentally ill people on the streets and in the subways, etc. There are too few in patient beds, too little funding, and little follow through.  The comments on the article fall into several camps: 1) the subway is not a homeless shelter, it's a means of transportation; 2) NY has short changed the mentally ill for years, and current budgets continue the process; 3) homeless, mentally ill people are attacking people of Asian ancestry, often as a result of unfounded lies about Coronavirus, etc; and 4) NYS law and practice makes rounding up and holding non-violent mentally ill people against their will just about impossible.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/nyregion/nyc-mentally-ill-involuntary-custody.html

Good riddance. It's about time. The NYCTA is in a business to transport people from Point A to Point B, not meant to be a living shelter. The non-violent mentally ill people should be placed in true shelter, whether hospital or special home.

Where are they going to put these people? Psych beds are few and far between.

I agree. We don't have enough room for everyone who needs to be away from others. Many of them wouldn't act out if they had decent living space, but city rents are so high that even people who are able to work and have a normal amount of money can't find housing, which leads to unhealthy situations even for the able-bodied and terrible danger for the vulnerable.

Because the 1950s "snake pit" mental hospitals were so bad didn't mean we needed to dump everyone out on the street, where it actually costs more to take care of them than we'd spend on small but livable sleeping rooms. Our own local shelters are fairly safe. That's not at all the case in major cities.

We also need something between the police drunk tank holding cell and dumping plain drunks in ER where they clog up the system just to stay warm. Jail officers are so busy watching violent prisoners that anyone who isn't making noise falls through the cracks. It's not easy to tell a quiet drunk from someone which a TBI from falls, COVID dizziness, or a diabetic emergency. 

Rebecca Morgan
Jacobsburg, OH

Rebranding bums, hobos, vagrants, tramps, beggars, squatters, arsonists, felons, thieves, shoplifters, derelicts, vandals, transients, sociopaths, addicts and drunks as "homeless" was a genius marketing strategy of the homelessness industries. Homelessness is a growth industry large enough to support multiple coalitions of homelessness coalitions. More "homeless" headcount = more public $$$$$$$$$.

There is a lot of truth in that statement. However mental illness is a huge, unaddressed issue. It needs to be addressed but no one wants to touch it.


Lurch_in_ABQ Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Rebranding bums, hobos, vagrants, tramps, beggars,
> squatters, arsonists, felons, thieves,
> shoplifters, derelicts, vandals, transients,
> sociopaths, addicts and drunks as "homeless" was a
> genius marketing strategy of the homelessness
> industries. Homelessness is a growth
> industry large enough to support multiple
> coalitions of homelessness coalitions. More
> "homeless" headcount = more public $$$$$$$$$.

Posted from Android

Cart before the horse - meaningless bloviating. That's all Adams has done since he was inaugurated. There is not a significant mental health infrastructure to do it, despite 1950's Ralph Kramden intimating Bellevue has such facilites.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/22 07:03 by joemvcnj.

this country spends a LOT of money abroad.

let's start spending money here where the help is DESPERATELY needed............

66

Yes sir! The few hundred billion dollars we've sent overseas the past few months would do wonders here at home for the mental illness issues and general homeless problems. Not to mention transit and general infrastructure.


goneon66 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> this country spends a LOT of money abroad.
>
> let's start spending money here where the help is
> DESPERATELY needed............
>
> 66

Posted from Android

Hang on. U.S. direct foreign aid is about $40-50 billion (it varies year to year). Betweeen a quarter and a third of that is military aid, which clearly benefits us. There is another $10-20 billion overlay for Ukraine, which 99% of Americans would endorse. Where do the hundreds of billions come from?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/22 09:08 by ctillnc.

So, someone will forcibly detain those "...who appear unable to care for themselves...". Who makes that determination? the cop on the beat using his/her judgment ? Really? Is this going to set a new standard to "invisablize" those whose only transgression is to appear unkempt and simply visibly unsightly? What is this, mainland China?

Yes, mental illness is a problem but, unless a mentally ill person is a danger to others or him/herself, they should be left alone.

People should not be incarcerated for being unfashionable.

Homelessness is another and related issue. Until we confront and deal with the problem of lack of adequate rental housing available to those with lower incomes we will be dealing with homelessness.

If you feel the mental illness  and the homelessness are a problem then demand that our politicians make housing available and mental illness treatable for people of lower income levels. Those are the only possible solutions to the problem. Simply "removing" them from public transportation is to move them somewhere else and make them someone else's problem. How does that solve anything?

Reminds me of what used to be called "Greyhound therapy" in which a local community would buy bus tickets for people they did not like (not fashionable or having a place to live) and sending them to the next town to be a problem there. 

You are right. As of August 11th, "only" 54 billion to Ukraine alone. Add a few billion more since then.

I guess I'm the .01% that does not support endless support for endless wars, that money approaching 100 billion could be spent on AMERICANS first, as long as there are homeless, folks that can't pay their bills or get medical attention. We can support the military industrial complex and corrupt foreign governments AFTER we get our house in order. Just my opinion, you are welcome to yours.

Posted from Android



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/22 10:08 by cabsignaldrop.

It's a very difficult and demanding problem. I am starting to read Michael Shellenberger's book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

By the title, you'd think it's another screaming-on-the-radio attack by a deep-dipped arch conservative. But it's not. Shellenberger is a dyed-in-the-wool progressive and self-described former socialist, with a BA degree in Peace and Global Studies from Earlham College, a Quaker institution with a strong pacifist bent. He also holds an MA in Anthropology from the University of California - Santa Cruz, an institution not particularly known as a bastion of far-right politics. Of a Mennonite background, he has strong credentials as an environmental and social activist. And while I have only just started the book, I have been impressed so far at his cogent, well-reasoned, level-headed approach to the problem of mental illness and homelessness -  and all of the social problems that are associated with, and which flow from it.

I've heard him interviewed twice on radio, and in both interviews (one on a liberal program, one on a moderately conservative program) he came across with the same carefully reasoned, well-researched conclusions (the book has 86 pages of well-documented end notes). As I understand it from the radio interviews, and am starting to see argued in the book, the solution he proposes is to first stop the practice of identifying people as victims, and then throwing costly solutions at them and their behaviors focused on ending their perceived victimization. Then it is to established merit-based, intensive treatment that recognizes persons as ones who can, to some greater or lesser degree, act responsibly with others in the right context of support. And in collaboration with support services (therapy, medication, shelter and housing, job placement), either in an institutional setting or outside, to gradually keep moving toward a more and more self-sustaining, self-responsible state.

For example, act with a degree of personal responsibility, even if mentally ill, by taking medication and engaging in some supportive therapy, and there is a reward of some slightly better shelter accommodation off the street. Keep that up with progress and stick with therapy, and there might be better, more personal housing. And later, even a job reference. Don't just throw money at a situation, don't just build shelters or provide a publicly-financed apartment as a way to end their wrongly perceived victimization. But help people to engage in their own support and growth, whether in an institutionalized or non-institutional setting. And help them to recognize that they can, in their own making by doing certain self-responsible things like taking meds, keeping up with therapy and support, and doing a responsible job, help to build and self-reward their own life.

My initial reaction? It creeped me out. Totally. It felt, at first glance, so much like so many movies depicting institutions of one kind or another, each with a creepy. authoritarian administrator who dangles rewards in front of residents like forbidden candy. The approach of a detention camp in a totalitarian state. Or a prison warden's approach to a recalcitrant, troublesome inmate: "Do as we say, and you can have...." Cool Hand Luke, in spades. "And what we have here is....a failure...to...com-mu-ni-cate!"

If not handled with exquisite grace, and a deeply ethical well of practice to draw upon, such an approach could be as abusive to troubled, homeless, mentally ill persons -- and larger society -- as doing nothing.

I have to give Shellenberger points for the college try. I am not yet convinced, if I am understanding his argument at this early stage of reading the book, and from the radio interviews I heard. Despite my practical, rather pragmatic orientation. But I have no other solution to a serious, deeply intractable problem.

And I am reminded as I read the book of long discussions I've had, many years ago, with a college professor of mine, who was a key staff psychiatrist at a state mental hospital before it was closed and everybody was "de-institutionalized". He held that such an approach, which he strongly favored (back at a time when the first successful anti-psychotic drugs were gaining acceptance and promise), if applied carefully, ethically and with compassion, was the only way out of either difficult permanent institutionalization, or all kinds of other corrosive social effects for de-institutionalized persons. I struggled with that view then, as I do with Shellenberger's now. So strong was the "do something compassionate -- and now!" impetus of politics constantly blaring at me, and my own Catholic social justice upbringing. Both always acting in tension with my strongly practical, pragmatic orientation.

But maybe this approach needs a serious, carefully administered, thoroughly monitored and tested, very patient (it will not be easy or quick), well executed try. Heaven knows the other techniques have failed. Miserably.

Read the book, or find an interview with the author online and listen. The book is thoughtful, solid, well-reasoned, well-researched. And maybe, just maybe, it might contain a pathway to a solution.

MC



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/22 13:45 by ironmtn.