Is It Time to Rethink (And Change) the Way American Society Deals With the Mentally Ill?

Question by Daniel ben Mordechai: Is it time to rethink (and change) the way American society deals with the mentally ill?
In a piece today at the Wall Street Journal that I find appropriate as a starting point for discussion in the aftermath of the shooting in Tucson this past weekend by the psychopathic Jared Loughner, Dr. E. Fuller Torrey faults the move in the 1960s to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill “without providing adequate treatment alternatives”:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703779704576073973345594508.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEADTop#printMode

Your comments?

Best answer:

Answer by Sadie Winter
I was thinking the exact same thing today! I didn’t read your article but I remember learning about the institutionalization movement in my Psych classes in college….They painted it as a wonderful thing for society…..If we treating schizophrenics today like we did back then Loughner would have been safely locked up in an institution. Schizophrenics are highly dangerous because of their hallucinations and delusions. They may themselves be perfectly moral and kind people but their disease causes them to for example hallucinate and believe that someone is the devil or an evil demean so they kill them. I saw a case where a schizophrenic woman chopped up her baby because she thought it was the devil…

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

 


 

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