Not difficult as in finding a doctor, but difficult as in having limited refills, needing health insurance, price of the doctors visit, price of the medicine,,,.
...............shouldn't we as a society be focused on mental health reform?
Why aren't we as a culture having a serious debate on the need for mental health reform?
Quoted from article:
"Mental illness isnt just a criminal justice problem or a regulatory issue, and we cant treat it like one. But for the past few decades, thats exactly what weve done: Instead of treating people with serious mental illnesses, weve shoved them to the margins of society where they could be easily ignored. According to a 2006 report [PDF] from the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, more than half of the countrys prison population suffers or has suffered from mental disorders. Only a fraction of that population receives treatment during their incarceration.
Mental illness is also endemic to homelessness. According to the statistics [PDF] from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, nearly two-thirds of the chronically homeless in America have experienced lifetime mental health problems.
The roots of Americas poverty-and-punishment solution to mental illness can be traced back to the mid-twentieth century and the once-promising trend of deinstitutionalization. This Kaiser Commission report [PDF] is a good primer on the history of the movement. In the late fifties and early sixties, civil libertarian activists challenged the involuntary commitment of hundreds of thousands of Americans in mental hospitals, saying that it violated civil liberties and that the hospitals themselves often subjected patients to horrible conditions.
At first, according to the report, the downsizing of mental hospitals was accompanied by a serious effort to create infrastructure for a national community health clinic. But a number of institutional, economic and political pressures gradually eroded the burgeoning program. The killing blow came in the Reagonomics area, when President Ronald Reagan dismantled much of the federal welfare state, leaving countless mentally ill Americans without access to income or housing. Federal funding for community mental health clinics dropped by 25%.
Trying to render the mentally ill invisibleor, worse, trying to funnel them through our increasingly corpulent and barbaric criminal justice systemwont mitigate the problem. Nor will it do any good to stigmatize mental illness, or sensationalize the horrific actions of a small handful of individuals. What is needed here is real support and real treatment".
Link to article above for full reading
I have never understood people (in America) who cannot see that the brain is an organ, like any other organ in the body, that can become diseased, malfunction and or be deformed. If someone has cancer or is born with Spina Bifida or some other condition they are not treated with the same type of malice and disregard, and hate as someone who has a diseased brain.
Mental health in this country is a very serious issue, and yet we have politicians and Governors cutting funding to mental health services back to the extreme, shutting down much needed psychiatric facilities, leading to bed shortages, and placing the mentally ill in jails and prisons, where the staff are ill equipped to deal with them. Those who are in the jails and prisons who are truly mentally ill get far worse there, and often times are not medicated properly, nor given the type of in depth treatment that is needed for stabilization.
We shuffled our mentally ill who are homeless out of hospitals as soon as there is no profit to be made with "one way" tickets to another city, with no support or medications. We beat and even kill our mentally ill via our law enforcement (as in many cases already documented on youtube and news articles).
It is the way society views the mentally ill. The sad fact is that most people with a mental illness such as yourself Texas Hiker are not violent, and with proper treatment can get better and be productive citizens in the world.
There are huge lists of famous people who have mental illnesses, like Robin Williams, Catherine Zeta Jones, Drew Carry, Mel Gibson, and many many others including some famous scientists and artists. But they are the lucky ones who have the money and support.
Yea, that is what it boils down to. Money.. in the end.