I have schizophrenia. It’s a touchy subject, but I agree. Some of us just can’t help ourselves.
A major problem is availability of care. It’s common for people to have to wait months to see a psychiatrist here in the US, and it’s a problem in other areas too. There just aren’t enough psychiatrists to go around. But schizophrenia is the kind of illness that demands immediate treatment. It’s dangerous not primarily because its subjects are violent, but because it just takes, and takes, and takes, everything it can from someone’s mind until they can basically do nothing.
Medication helps, it absolutely does. But many of us refuse to take it, because of the side effects - they can make us drowsy, lethargic, dizzy, even suicidal. I once took Risperidone and it made me so unsteady on my feet that I had to walk with a cane, in my early 20s. For many the choice of whether to take meds is extremely difficult for these reasons. Not to mention the fact that many will think they’re cured after taking antipsychotics for a while, stop taking them, and end up in bad situations because the illness wasn’t actually cured.
It doesn’t help that mental hospitals have a terrible reputation in our community. Many are scared to go to the emergency room because they think that they’ll simply be drugged up by a careless doctor who isn’t interested in what his “insane” patients have to say about their treatment. In some places, this is true, and that’s the worst part. Nobody should have to be treated this way.
Many of us can function without living in a hospital forever. I am one such individual - I hold a good job and live on my own - and I know plenty of other people who can do the same. Some people can’t, though, and that’s okay. We shouldn’t count all people with schizophrenia as demons to be purged, but we also shouldn’t lie and say we’re all perfectly independent people. We all need help, some more than others.
This is an extremely ignorant and privileged anecdote. Involuntary care would be fine if it was actually care. But what “involuntary care” actually means is cops attacking people, encaging people, drugging people, leeching and counter-productive “mental health care”, pseudo-science, etc…
The actual root problems (lack of housing, etc) are never attacked because the state/cops serve the capital that profits. The system of profiting from human needs requires human deprivation and suffering.
My fellow commuters exchanged nervous glances or stared blankly out the windows, trying to pretend nothing was happening.
Nothing was happening. What kind of creep would call for a violent police attack on this bus? This dude is trying to pretend that the housing crisis and abuse of the unhoused doesn’t exist.
We all need help, some more than others.
Deciding that nothing happened or is happening is pretty damned privileged in my opinion.
A good friend and her toddler needed public transit the other week and had to deal with a guy smoking hard drugs at the bus stop who, after boarding the bus and started yelling gay slurs at someone. Is she ever going to be okay putting her kid on public transit alone? Or will she need to take extra time off work to escort her kid everywhere? Or work extra to afford to uber the kid to everything? Or just not leave?
That’s a pretty sketchy but not entirely unusual occurrence here in Vancouver. My heart bleeds for those struggling but that also includes those who need to walk downtown, those who are vulnerable (more than a few girls I know are worried, with good reason, if they have to leave their places alone at night) or the small business owners who’ve given up after replacing their glass windows for the third time in a month. As a reasonable sized dude, I’m fine kind of wherever but I think it’s essential to remember that empathy goes both ways.
On the other hand-
Fuck paywalls.
It’s really hard to find the lines between community safety, ‘but it’s for your own good’, and patient autonomy. Severe autism is an area where i think we’re going to see a huge issue within 10 years. Numbers are growing in kids and as parents age/pass it’s going to get bad.
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