The country that closed its psychiatric hospitals

https://members.tortoisemedia.com/2...-health-institutions-ian-birrell/content.html

 

Not just Britain. Famously, at least locally, a man was tasered to death at Toronto International Airport because he was agitated. He was frightened, alone and couldn't speak English.

Just in my opinion but all of this horror stems from a simple axiom gone to far. Time is money. There is no time to deal with things that take time and some effort to deal with in a reasonable way. A little compassion wouldn't go amiss either. Easier and simpler to put the boot to someone and pretend it's compassion and effective (in a humane sense).

 

Supposedly this way of doing things greatly reduces the cost because there are no guards.

 

Interesting. I missed that point. I would have thought that all the time spent with the patient added up to more.

Maybe Italy could get interested in exporting consultants to other countries on how to save money this way.

 

This reminds me of an article I read late last year/ early this year.

A psychiatrist was tasked with introducing antidepressants into areas of Vietnam.

He met with a " village head " to explain how lives could be improved and was taken aback when told categorically that pills were not needed He simply could not believe this.

The village head introduced him to a villager as an example. This poor man had lost the lower part of one leg and had been a rice grower. Working in paddy fields had made him more and more miserable.

The community noticed this, had a meeting with the man, offered full support and the solution was found- he became an animal farmer ( cow/ pig) . No more wading in paddy field water, and his depression resolved.

We have lost sight of so much.

 

Some articles on the subject of mental health provision in the UK and elsewhere that are alarming to say the least :

https://www.cchrint.org/2017/01/16/...on-fraud-abuse-buys-uk-behavioral-facilities/

https://www.cchrint.org/2017/06/05/uhs-under-investigation/

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/behavioral-rehabilitation-market

There is also this link but I think it is only available to people who subscribe :

https://www.economist.com/britain/2018/04/19/an-alarming-rise-in-mental-health-sectioning-in-britain

 

I believe the best way of controlling people is accusing them that they might be mentally ill. Then your life is taken away from you. But real nut cases are out and they are actually ruling us, doing all murdering, pillaging, robbing etc.

 

Well, that explains a lot. And almost nothing to show for it while common sense alternatives would be significantly cheaper. And this is while the thing is being massively expanded despite consistent evidence showing it amounts to basically nothing.

So $1T wasted every 6 years, and all because people don't want to spend hundreds of millions to low billions in research. That's super smart use of money. Great economics.

Other things aside, it's clear that psychiatry needs it coercive powers to be revoked. The profession cannot handle the responsibility, has made that very clear. It has its own problems but nothing that compares to the disaster of this much completely unaccountable power in the hands of people who value their personal opinions above objective reality.

And that's even before people understand how people's rights, even their agency, can be yanked away without zero process, zero oversight, on mere implication, with no paper trail, from small samples in highly biased settings that basically assume millions of people can be ignored and everything we say dismissed with prejudice. Beyond the official process of institutionalization, there is a much broader problem where nearly the same thing happens without any of the process and on mere whims.

 

it seems that not all MH patients are that keen on psychiatrists either

https://twitter.com/user/status/1207227522422849536

 

I love that the statement itself is entirely meaningless: "the modern world is toxic for our health". What does "the modern world" stand for here? Many of us literally live in the safest, most prosperous, most educated and healthiest period in the whole of history, aside from pollution but then that can of worms is always rejected by psychs since it impinges on their turf and falsifies their beliefs about magical psychology as the alternative explanation to basic common sense.

This trope of "the modern world" being too fast on "weak constitutions" has been going for so long it's almost right up there along with "the youth are degenerates", which also means nothing and goes back all the way to antiquity and possibly beyond. It's literally a running gag at this point.

Pollution is indeed toxic. Literally. Linked to all sorts of health problems, from cardiovascular to respiratory and most likely explains a huge chunk of the remaining chronic illnesses that psychiatrists hold in a stranglehold, unable to progress. The link from pollution to depression is getting very hard to continue to deny, and it even explains many of the socioeconomic associations with chronic health problems, since poor people always live in more polluted areas.

So to Wessely, a meaningless comment that is so banal it's basically a trope is "SPOT ON!". Figures. Right along there with his shilling for Eysenck's cancer-personality link and how 9/11 health-related problems are mass hysteria. The guy truly has a natural talent for being wrong.