…that few in the media seem to want to talk about, because it doesn’t fit The Narrative.
Another madman:
[Updaate mid morning]
The madness lobby. It is kind of bizarre to have a lobby for an illness that fights to prevent treatment.
26 thoughts on “The Real Issue In Arizona”
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Jennifer Rubin is raising the level of discourse which is what the left is complaining about, but not actually doing themselves.
We have discussed this rather intently on an earlier thread. So, I will just say, kudos to Rich Lowrey for an excellent column.
Not at all, since treatment in the past has often included mutilation, torture, and drugging.
The true question is: do we assert that, as they were born of woman, the insane are human and therefore possessed of human rights and responsibilities? Or do we adopt the hypothesis that they incapable of moral judgment, and therefore to be dealt with as wolves are?
I have lived in Phoenix AZ for 6 years and have come up with at least one solution for the state. Stop the Segregation! Have all correctional institutions stop separating gangs from one another. Put them All in the same cell blocks, let nature take it’s course…and if my theory is correct, the inmates should take care of over 90% of the problem themselves. As a side note, I would like to say that in AZ the cutting of the mental health budget…was right up there with the thinking of the recent shootist. I would wager with some of you that since AZ has a carrying a concealed weapon became law…that at least one dozen spectators in that crowd could have taken care of the shooter and clamied self defense. Just my two cents worth.
I wish I knew the right answer to this. I am sure that there are some people who can’t make good decisions themselves, any time, and others who pass through periods in which they can’t. I don’t doubt that in some cases drugs can work wonders.
The problem for me, however, is — who decides? I am generally OK with parents deciding for their children, and perhaps even children deciding for their older parents — genetics being what it is, the probability of a kind and wise decision is in general (albeit not always) above average.
But for adults? Young adults in particular? Am I to trust the state to make these decisions? The same justice system that makes such a horrible mess of simply enforcing the law? Blech. The state is already charged with intervening in cases of child abuse, and there is no serious lobby opposing that. And yet they are so incompetent and compromised in that duty that it is doubtful they improve the situation, on balance.
The best I can imagine, in Phamutopia, is that each child, on reaching maturity and on having demonstrated for at least some measure of time the capability of making sound decisions and running his life competently, must then appoint an agent, or small council, which agent or council will thereafter have the power to declare him non compos mentis and enforce treatment. The agent(s) can be changed at will, for any reason or non, at any time (although obviously not when you’ve been declared incompetent already) — but they must always exist. Roughly speaking, you have to designate the executor of your last will and testament as soon as you reach majority, as one of the first duties of adulthood.
This is not super duper, of course. But I think what dismays me most about having the state make such decisions is that it lacks the key element of human judgment and understanding. It’s not someone who knows you making the decision, and taking personal responsibility — it’s a bunch of lawyers and judges, none of whom know you or care the slightest about you, and none of whom will suffer any personal consequence — not even shame and damage to reputation — if they screw it up. Making the appointment yourself, of someone you know, seems at least to more strongly involve the essential element of human judgment, to better align the responsibilities and motives.
People abuse each other. Laws can only limit the abuse, they can’t prevent it. Being mentally ill means being less able to defend themselves from abuse and more likely to be the cause as well.
I think we have to look at actions. When a person becomes violent we need to act. I expect violence will usually present itself earlier than tragedy. Not in all cases of course, which suggests we stop all the worthless hand wringing and just accept the reality that things happen. We need to focus on what is preventable.
Gun exclusion zones are idiocy. Let’s see, prevent the innocent from being able to protect themselves and others while doing nothing to prevent someone from doing the exact same thing this guy did. There’s an example of brain damage.
Eric Fuller, Tuscon shooting victim who blames Palin and Beck, ARRESTED for threatening Tea Party leader!
Go chase it down, guys; it’s all over the Rightosphere!
Eric Fuller is currently the third story down on my blog.
Go chase it down, guys; it’s all over the Rightosphere!
What for? So we can play the same game?
Carl Pham Says:
January 15th, 2011 at 2:07 pm
“The problem for me, however, is — who decides?”
Anyone who has had real interaction with people with severe mental illness knows… it isn’t a close all. At all.
That looks almost like the same shirt as Danae from the “Non Sequitur” comic strip. Except that the skull isn’t framed by a heart.
it isn’t a close all
Bart I do have real interaction with S.M.I. people. Usually you are correct. Many are not capable of appearing ‘normal.’ However, some are. If you are not aware of that, you don’t have as much experience as you think you do.
I have a sister that fried her brain on drugs. She talks to people that aren’t there. She can fool people into thinking she’s normal, at least for a while.
Unless they are a vegetable, they function at some level and can appear outwardly normal in many cases. Sort of like that character played by Brad Pitt in 12 monkeys.
But the fact is, my sister, without supervision is a danger to herself and others even if not by violence (although she can be violent.) She could easily turn on a stove or light a candle and put the house on fire without intention.
My only brother sees things that don’t exist, yet can perform at a very high level. He refuses any kind of mental health. He’s in and out of jail most of his life. A judge once told him he’s never seen a file so thick for any one person.
I don’t know if my oldest sister would be considered S.M.I. but she is a sociopath. She made three attempts on my mothers life. The first was poison. The second she cut the brake line on her car (manipulating one of many boyfriends to do the actual deed.) Both were near things but the last was the worst. My mother went to the same university hospital in Tucson as the recent victims (which is why I know it to be a good hospital.) The doctor told me my sister had stabbed my mother 29 times. That and trying to suffocate her before she put the pillow under my mothers head and cried to the EMTs how someone had attacked my mother (a different boyfriend, seeing my mother but not realizing my sister had attacked her called 911 and my sister immediately hung up the phone then got the boyfriend to help clean up.) That call saved my mothers life.
I suffer from severe depression. I’m classified as S.M.I. although I do not take any mood altering drugs that doctors have for years tried to get me to take.
So Bart, You may not be the only person with some direct experience in this area.
That and the historical fact that people without mental illness have been locked up means that Carl’s question of who decides is valid.
I am also a teacher in AZ, and I can tell you that most of the students in the middle school are candidates waiting for their “number” to come up in the correctional lottery. Each student has a sad but true story to tell. Each one is different but they will all end up at the same place I suspect. I comfort myself with knowing that for a short time each day, so far, the school campus is a safe place from what is happening at home to these young people. Yes, we have had shootings and even a murder by mistaken identity on campus. Take a look around people, even the smallest of towns in Iowa, have murder. My problem at the moment is I am unskilled in the care and use of firearms. So my philosophy is this…whatever happens, that is how is it supposed to be. Whether I get it from an irate driver who thinks I am not going fast enough, or a student who thinks I did not give him a high enough grade…we all have to go sometime.
What people should really fear is a government that is so large and out of control, it can’t manage itself. Check your programs, the number of house members who REQUIRE therapy. Let’s face it, with their health care package and all of their *perks* I bet they won’t have a single shooting spree this session.
“I suffer from severe depression. I’m classified as S.M.I. although I do not take any mood altering drugs that doctors have for years tried to get me to take.”
Do you take Vitamin D suppliments?
“My problem at the moment is I am unskilled in the care and use of firearms. So my philosophy is this…whatever happens, that is how is it supposed to be.”
4 or 5 days of you life in a good class could fix the former. As to the latter, at least part of our fate, I believe, is in our own hands and I believe we will be judged on how seriously we take responsibility for that self-guardianship.
Anyone who has had real interaction with people with severe mental illness knows… it isn’t a close all. At all.
Well, Bart, leaving aside the obvious issue that the dividing line between “severe” and “non-severe” mental illness still needs to be drawn — forgive me if I suspect that people do not fall into two distinct classes, June Cleaver or Ted Bundy, but more along a spectrum — I would agree with you. I’m sure when I look at a person I don’t think deciding his mental competence is a close call. And neither do you. Just the way, alas, neither of us — in fact almost no one — thinks it’s a close call who should be elected President in 2012. The difficulty is that even though we all agree it isn’t a close call, our judgments nevertheless seem to differ enough to keep the problem alive.
Ken, if you’re opposed to drugs, have you considered this? Fellow claims to have relief rates not that different from meds, with lifestyle and diet changes he claims are soundly rooted in biology.
Also maybe the issue isn’t quite depression per se as it is social trust issues, meaning it is unusually hard for you to trust others think well of you, have your interests at heart, like you, genuinely respect what you say, et cetera. (Sorry to play armchair psychologists here, forgive please if I offend — trying to help.) We are social creatures, and without the feeling that we are appreciated and admired by others, at least some others, we wither inside. The feelings of people who are perfectly healthy but ostracized and socially rejected are not super different from those who are deeply unhappy. I only mention this because perhaps your early family experience did not build the “home” trust network and trust-building and monitoring skills you need — and perhaps you can consciously build them now, and it would help.
Incidentally, I think you’re a sharp guy with good moral sense and have valuable things to say.
“The madness lobby. It is kind of bizarre to have a lobby for an illness that fights to prevent treatment.”
What, you haven’t heard about deaf groups that oppose curing deafness, calling it “cultural genocide”?
Carl Pham Says:
January 16th, 2011 at 10:03 am
“I suspect that people do not fall into two distinct classes, June Cleaver or Ted Bundy, but more along a spectrum”
Ted Bundy was a manic depressive sociopath. His cognitive powers were not compromised. He is not representative of the people I am talking about. The people I am talking about are a spike on that spectrum.
They are easily identifiable, though you sometimes have to spend enough time with them that they can no longer maintain a facade of self-control. They stumble over their words, and sometimes spill into a word salad. They make odd and incomprehensible gestures with their hands and often have facial tics. They talk to themselves and have outbursts of laughter and giggling from no apparent source. They walk around in agitated circles. They cannot maintain a consistent train of thought for long, and they hallucinate.
From the reports I have heard, Loughner was nothing like Ted Bundy. There was no mask which could have been used to entice young ladies into his grasp. Everyone around him knew there was something wrong. And, if intervening action had been taken, six people would still be alive.
I think you’ve missed my point, Bart. But OK I’ll play along for a little while.
So can I conclude you would like a law passed in the state of Arizona that goes something like this:
“1. This Act shall be known as the Prevent Further Tragedies Act.
2. When everyone around him knows something is wrong, the Sheriff of the county in which he resides shall take into custody any resident of the State of Arizona over the age of 12 and see that he gets help.”
Sounds great! Er..well, there are one or two questions I have, as your neighborhood civil rights lawyer. Exactly who is “everyone”? Surely you don’t mean literally everyone — everyone on the planet. Everyone in the State? His local community? His family? His community college class? The local traffic-court judge and the arresting officers? Does “everyone” have to agree on what is “wrong?” If his mom thinks he’s just shy and sensitive, and his pop thinks he needs more discipline, and his best friend thinks he’s mooning over a girl, and the girl thinks he’s a dangerous sociopath…?
And what does it mean for him to get help? Commit him to a state hospital, after first resurrecting same? Does he ever get out? Can he be forced to take meds? By whom? For how long? What if somebody — he himself, his family, some annoying lawyer — objects? What if the doctors disagree among themselves?
I’m not trying to make fun of your motives or intent. I’m just trying to illustrate for you that “who decides” is not just a one-time decision, and it isn’t as simple as saying “something must be done” or not. There’s a continual necessity to decide what “something” is and who should do it and by what means.
Furthermore, I am sure either you or I could come up with a foolproof, finely-tuned algorithm that would catch Jared Loughner with 100% probability. But that isn’t the challenge, is it? The challenge would have been for us to, after Columbine, come up with a scheme that would’ve caught the Columbine killers with 100% certainty — and then later also caught Loughner. That is, we need an algorithm that works not just in hindsight, but also going forward, to anticipate the next problem person. We need some sure-fire litmus test, easily applicable by even idiots or people of bad faith — both of whom, alas, occupy positions of power in government — that will distinguish with 100% certainty dangerous murderers before they commit the murder from mere cranks, social outcasts, and batshit crazy but harmless people.
Hopefully that sounds damn iffy. After all, we can’t even come up with a surefire formula for appropriately helping people who are poor, out of a job, or who don’t seem able to pay for their medical care. We can’t even address our balance of payments problem, or the mortgage crisis — and those seem much simpler problems to solve algorithmically.
Hence my feeling, expressed above, that algorithmic checklist top-down legal social solutions to the problem are doomed to fail. The only mechanism that has a prayer of working is direct human judgment, by a person who is invested in the subject of the decision, who cares about the outcome, and who is personally responsible for the consequences of bad decisions.
Good thing I decided to read the thread before posting almost exactly the same thing.
Googling “Gallaudet College” would, if I’m not mistaken, reveal the epicenter of the notion that a handicap is an essential part of the identity of the person suffering it, and therefore they must suffer it or be traitors to their group.
Carl – How we would do it is a subject which would need far ranging debate well beyond the confines of a comment thread on a blog. But, it’s not like it hasn’t been done before. The commitment procedures of pre-deinstitutionalization days may (or may not – I am not taking sides here without specifics) have allowed abuses and represented too much of an infringement on civil rights, but that does not make their total elimination either right or optimal. Rational beings can craft a better, middle road without throwing in the towel and consigning their fates to the arbitrary winds of fortune (yeah, I know, metaphor alert, but you get the gist, so don’t bug me).
That procedures and rules can never be 100% effective is not an argument against having procedures and rules. As I always say, life can never be perfect, only optimal.
McGehee Says:
January 16th, 2011 at 12:26 pm
Excellent point. Of course, the people advocating continued suffering are largely those who are not afflicted, like those who deem we need to inhibit development of the Third World for their peoples’ own good. It’s always easy to shrug off the pain of others from the comfort of one’s warm and cozy den, and dream up rationalizations for why it is better for them to suffer.
On the domestic front, we deny the afflictions besetting others because we do not like the solutions on offer from their advocates. We fail to offer solutions of our own, rationalizing that by discrediting their approaches, we have demonstrated the lack of a problem.
For example, many of us know that the Obamacare approach to declaring universal medical coverage by royal fiat is doomed to fail and do even worse, by aggravating the supply problem in medical services. But, the opposition never comes up with a workable plan for expanding supply and stimulating competition, and creating a sustainable free market alternative which addresses the problem, which is real.
Conservatives will never reach a sustainable majority until they become more proactive. Sorry if I wandered rather farther afield than your comment, there. But, I needed to get it off my chest.
Bart I can agree with much you have to say but think you may be off in a few respects. We can do better, but optimal is as delusional as perfect. We should respect human rights. Any type of institutionalization has to be after an act that abuses the rights of others. Let’s examine your checklist…
They are easily identifiable, though you sometimes have to spend enough time with them that they can no longer maintain a facade of self-control. They stumble over their words, and sometimes spill into a word salad. They make odd and incomprehensible gestures with their hands and often have facial tics. They talk to themselves and have outbursts of laughter and giggling from no apparent source. They walk around in agitated circles. They cannot maintain a consistent train of thought for long, and they hallucinate.
I stumble over words. I’ve written word salads on this blog.
Oddness? Check! Outbursts? Check! Agitated? Pacing? Check!
My brain is no longer the brilliant tool of my youth. I can not concentrate or focus or get pleasure from reading (that’s a big one) anymore. I don’t exactly hallucinate but I’ve got an incredible imagination (that I can’t really express darn it) such that it is not uncommon for me to wonder what is real and what is imagined.
So I guess I should be locked in a cell, right? Except one of my principles since a child is ‘do no harm.’ Not in a simple sense. I take it to the extreme to the point of harming myself before others.
I’m objectively quite intelligent. I taught myself to read and do math before I was five. My first written words were, “flour, sugar, coffee, tea” and my first numbers were 2 to 13 because that was on the tv dial.
In the third grade a teacher said I couldn’t check out the college text from the library. She asked me to read a random page in the middle of it. After that I had to explain to her what the text meant. They let me read anything I wanted after that.
So it harmed me greatly when in college I dropped out a week before grades. Why? Because one instructor graded on a curve. This meant that all the Asians in all the physics classes were getting Cs and Ds when they expected As. Dropping out meant I didn’t get my full scholarship at Harvey Mudd which was contingent on getting those grades. I couldn’t do it to those strangers.
All through grade school I put myself between bullies and their victims. In a logic and semantics class a teacher was demonstrating the power of words by demeaning a girl in class (with her consent and private knowledge.) I physically could not keep myself in my seat. It was an internal struggle and I could not move faster than a snail. I had an extremely high regard for teachers at the time.
I’ve been in ‘observation.’ I had to call the police on myself once when my frustration exceeded my ability to cope and when they weren’t going to do anything I told them if they didn’t I was going to punch one of them right there (I was quite friendly about it.) So they locked me up. You see outwardly I might seem normal but inside I’m a wreck. While they thought I was asleep the staff joked about putting a pen in my eye. I’ve seen the abuse first hand including the head of an institution telling me that lobotomy is still considered acceptable therapy.
No, optimal is quite the delusion.
Using actions to determine institutionalization should be sufficient to catch all that you believe are easy to identify. The reason those institutions are gone today is because of false positives and abuse by those institutions and staff. Have you ever noticed that many of the people that go into psychiatry need a bit of help themselves? Sort of like pedophiles becoming Catholic priests?
To those that have express concern I thank you. This blog is about my only socialization and it keeps me sane. I thank you all (especially Rand who has put up with me for YEARS.)
Incidentally, I think you’re a sharp guy with good moral sense and have valuable things to say.
Fooled you! 🙂
Carl, TY.
No sale, Bart. I hear the same kind of unearned arrogant confidence in the religion of governance of men all the damn time from those who would legislate merely our economic decisions from the center. It’s just a question of implementation, that’s all — the principles are sound! Sure, it’s been screwed up 42,000 times in a row before, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be done right next time! Forward, comrades! Lend us your lives, fortunes, and sanity for one more round of experimentation…!
Nooooo thanks. I think you’re like the guy trying to use a hammer to fix the flaky hard drive on the computer. You give it a whack and it breaks, so then you say Oh well I must have hit it the wrong way — from the wrong angle, possibly. Or not hard enough. Or I shouldn’t have been whistling at the time.
It doesn’t occur to you to ask whether in fact you’re using the wrong tool, and no matter how much fiddling and adjusting and experimenting you do, you’ll never be able to get the job done.
That’s what I think legislating this process (or really any complex highly personal decision) is: the wrong tool. It will never work. It’s not just a question of “implementation” or of some “long discussion” about the exact rules and details. Your fundamental conception of the problem and its solution are tragically and completely wrong. Only a radical break from the unexamined and horribly erroneous assumptions in your approach has any prayer of success.
You know what makes me think that the potential for heated political rhetoric to foster violence is overrated? The lack of a bloodbath during the Bush years. And the lack of a bloodbath in December 2000 in those Florida counties where a whole lot of Democrats were conned into thinking that their votes weren’t counted – when in fact they were counted repeatedly.
The anti-Democrat rhetoric (and cartographic visual aids) have been far less heated.
Actually the most harmful such advocacy does come from those who are afflicted — despairing of ever bettering themselves because it requires resolve and effort, they endeavor to validate their pre-determined failure by instilling it as a virtue in their peers.