Do we really have patience for the mentally disturbed?
Maybe a blog should be about happy, positive subjects, but when mama read the article in the NYT about Riker’s Island and the inmates who have been subjected to lethal beatings, torture, and humiliation, she asked me to please say something. Many of these inmates are mental patients, on the streets without recourse to care and shelter stemming from the 1960s closing of mental facilites by Ronald Reagan. Over 40% of Riker’s Island inmates are mentally disturbed and there has been a surge in violence not seen in years in our prisons. But where else can mentally impaired inmates go?
What kind of a country are we that we do not have help for mentally disturbed individuals? And this began in the 60s—in 2012 Alabama shut most of its mental facilities “to cut costs” as have many states since Reagan’s decision.
Some of these victims are suing Riker’s Island, but will they win? And who are the administrators of our prisons that they can allow vicious treatment of mentally handicapped people who have nowhere to turn?
My view is that if there is a tiny drop of liquid to calm a kitty like me during traumatic events like sea crossings and long car trips, then certainly there are many, many new drugs to aid with mental illness that are a far cry from Thorazine and others that turn disturbed individuals into zombies in order to “handle” them.
I cannot list here the number of mental hospitals that have closed in the USA since the Reagan decision and to be fair, hospitals have closed during other presidents’ terms because the facilities have not complied with federal regulations .
I am distressed that so many poor, homeless, mentally impaired anthros are wandering the streets of our very rich country when they might have found shelter in places that could help professionally to ease their suffering.
Why do we close hospitals and schools to “cut costs”?
Why are we not cutting salaries of those who manage our great nation.
And, at this rate, how long will our nation be great?
This kitty mourns for “those at peril on the sea” –of indifference.
Oh, Loulou, what a sweet, precious, compassionate little kitty you are to be wondering about the Nation’s mentally ill population. Yes, it is a shame the way they are treated. Thanks for speaking up!
Well, Beverly, sometimes I see some lost kitties around our neighbourhood and they are grungy and hungry and confused and so I think it must be the same with anthros. Thank YOU for writing me.