Do we need more facitilies for the mentally ill & new laws to make it easier to commit mentally ill people against their will?

Did you know that Newtown Connecticut was the home of Fairfield State Hospital (a psychiatric hospital in Newtown, Connecticut, which operated from 1931 until 1995. At its peak the hospital housed over 4,000 patients.)?

My sister in law spent a summer there? I asked her if it helped! (she has no sense of humor!). She was a nurse intern there years ago (she is now retired).

I used to buy into the idea that “mentally illness” is a misnomer - but gave that view up some time ago (there’s a guy who used to post on Sharper Iron … Bob T. He has a child with mental illness and he addressed that on S/I.

I do think that there should be a way to commit a person and that had Fairfield State Hospital still been in operation that the Newton school murderer could have been committed and violence adverted.

Jim,

What makes you think the Newtown murderer would have been committed?

[Chip Van Emmerik]

Jim,

What makes you think the Newtown murderer would have been committed?

I said:

the Newton school murderer could have been committed

The Deinstitutionalization of the Mentally Ill began (article says “accelerated”) under President Kennedy.

President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Community Mental Health Centers Act accelerated the trend toward deinstitutionalization with the establishment of a network of community mental health centers. In the 1960s, with the introduction of Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government assumed an increasing share of responsibility for the costs of mental health care. That trend continued into the 1970s with the implementation of the Supplemental Security Income program in 1974. State governments helped accelerate deinstitutionalization, especially of elderly people. In the 1960s and 1970s, state and national policies championed the need for comprehensive community mental health care, though this ideal was slowly and only partially realized.

Beginning in the 1980s, managed care systems began to review systematically the use of inpatient hospital care for mental health. Both public concerns and private health insurance policies generated financial incentives to admit fewer people to hospitals and discharge inpatients more rapidly, limit the length of patient stays, or to transfer responsibility to less costly forms of care.

Sorry Jim. You meant #2 and I thought you meant #3 (conditioned on it having been open).

could [kood; unstressed kuhd]
verb
1. a simple past tense of can .
auxiliary verb
2. (used to express possibility): I wonder who that could be at the door. That couldn’t be true.
3. (used to express conditional possibility or ability): You could do it if you tried.
4. (used in making polite requests): Could you open the door for me, please?
5. (used in asking for permission): Could I borrow your pen?
6. (used in offering suggestions or advice): You could write and ask for more information. You could at least have called me.

What should we do with that Alabama man, or other people who are on the streets and acting crazy, hallucinating, thinking they are Napolean or Moses, but have not yet committed crimes?

Let me point you to a website of a very effective ministry to the mentally ill homeless in Grand Rapids MI.

http://www.servantscenter.org/

It was started by a former IFCA pastor and professor (GRSBM and Calvary Bible College), Don Tack. They do a great job finding these people under bridges and other places around the city, building relationships of trust, finding them housing, becoming their payee in order to manage their SSI money, introducing them to Christ, and connecting them to local churches for life-on-life discipleship. They believe deinstitutionalization has gone too far. In order to protect the mentally ill (who happen to be one of the most victimized people group to violent crime) from others, themselves, and the public (many of these mass gun crimes were done by those with a mental illness…..VA Tech, Aurora, Arizona, Sandra Hook, and etc…) some of these laws need to be reformed.