It's a new year. I hope you are all healthy and happy, and that you and all those you love are safe and warm.
I am old and cynical, so take this for what it's worth, but 2015 does not hold much promise for being much better than 2014, except maybe for the Patriots -- that's the football team, not a bunch of Whooped-Up Americans.
For most people 2014 was kind of OK. If you were rich you got richer. Everyone else paid a little more and got paid a little less, but for most folks it wasn't too drastic. If you were poor and struggling last year it looks like you will be poor and struggling this year. If you had psychological and emotional issues last year more of you will be able to get some kind of help, from some kind of somewhat trained helper. They may give you a supportive place to list your difficulties. They may offer some advice, the kind of which you knew before you saw them. They may even help you see that you have some paths to choose that you didn't realize were open to you. That can be very helpful.
But they won't be able to open any doors that are closed to you, or spend enough time with you so that you can retrain your brain to not be so reactive, or to learn totally new behavioral responses to stressful situations, or to change the stressful situation, or to change the fact that you may have chronic pain or a degenerative disease.
In short, there is still no really effective treatment for all the things we call "mental illness."
The guy who shot the two policeman in NYC, the kid who shot his adoptive mother and a couple of other people in Idaho, the veteran who shot his psychologist in Texas, and of course, the jihadists who killed so many people in Paris were all suffering from some form of discontentment. I believe that at sometime in their lives they had either actively sought help, or were at least known in their communities to be people who were "at risk."
Do we know what to do to help people who are "at risk?" I think that most of the time we could figure out an answer. Find a way to form a relationship, to not only offer help but to offer some resources so that they are able to use the help -- a place to live, job training, stable support people, food, warmth, trust, encouragement, understanding, new and better options to choose from.
But that is very time consuming and very expensive. It's much simpler, easier, and cheaper just to wait until they go off the rails, and then shoot them.
there is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.
-- H.L. Mencken.
4 comments:
An example of the inadequate services offered the mentally ill: last week, our congregation (one among about a dozen in our community, including the synagogue) hosted a cold weather shelter for our town's homeless men and women. Another agency interviews those who want admission to the shelter, which has limited capacity. Many of the guests are mentally ill and the shelter volunteers are not really equipped to deal with them. Fights break out, (one guest at our churh pulled a knife), the police are called, people are evicted, then banned, from the shelter. This week, at another church, a female guest got into an argument with a volunteer and dashed out onto a busy highway. Fortunately, she wasn't hurt and the police eventually found her. Often the reason for these outbursts is that people go off their meds. The agency that cares for the mentally ill in our county is 12 miles away, but one (!) caseworker is available to come out to the shelter if need be.
What kind of society forces well-meaning volunteers to deal with such issues during the coldest weeks of the year? YIKES.
@Forsythia And then the volunteers stop coming. Who can blame them?
The solutions are so basic and yet so unattainable. It is hard to imagine that things will ever get better.
Maybe here and there for some people who are lucky enough to get the help they need, but for the most part it is depressing.
Lena, Just received an e-mail updating the volunteers on the situation with the woman who ran out onto the highway. The police DID eventually get hold of her, but not until after a teacher at a local parochial school found the woman "in the creek" near the school. This is just so wrong.
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