I'm not a therapist
I was just a Rehabilitation Aide (its like a Case Manager), so I was hired by an agency and was assigned clients that way. People in Brooklyn tend to enter the mental health system by way of a particularly bad incident. As the video showed, much of the paranoia is directed towards the meds, so many times people with schizophrenia will not take them for one day (this can also happen by way of overconfidence, which is arguably even more sad), and then as they continue to avoid them, they tend to get worse. So eventually they wind up running through the street naked fighting demons that only they can see. They're picked up by the police, brought to the wards where one way or another they are convinced of their mental illness, and then they almost never leave the system. This is the most typical way that one enters the mental health system unfortunately (at least where I worked) Once they're in the system, it all works on recommendations and quotas amongst mental health professionals; while you're in the system, you tend to have little control over where you wind up going.
If all of this sounds quite bad, that's because it is, everyone knows that the system is broken, but a combination of red tape, an overabundance of people with mental illness, and a lack of ideas about what to do about it keeps it that way. On the plus side, some people eventually leave the system and do quite well, but its a rare occurrence.
Sorry if that was a bit of a rant, its all a bit aggravating from the inside, but from the outside-at least we're all trying.
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Arsonade is saving up for a new box of hummus, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 18:49,
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Not a rant at all
Very sad that's how it works, someone on here posted some photos of a Mental Health place they went to a couple of years ago, just by looking at it it didn't seem like the most constructive of environments? I don't know how the system in the UK differs from the US, I hope its slightly better? I guess its a lot of hard working people trying to the best they can in an unhelpful environment. I don't know much about schizophrenia, I don't think the way its handled in the media is especially helpful, definitely around reports of Cannabis etc, tends to be described as some sort of living death? "I lost my son to cannabis" etc. The video above was a enlightening insight, as well as what you've said there. Food for thought.
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Jorvic, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 18:59,
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The media
seems to be a bit more helpful on this side of the pond, I've heard horror stories about the daily mail, I'm glad we don't have them over here so much.
Cannabis does dot lead to schizophrenia (although it can act as a trigger for those who have the illness already)
However, many of my clients were former crackheads, I don't know of the actual studies, but after working there...well I wouldn't recommend it.
At any rate, Schizophrenia is no living death, from what I've seen, its just living with a lot more fear than average. When they're stable though, they can be completely normal people, I knew guys who had not had episodes for years, even in the system clients would get married, practice art, play basketball, all sorts of stuff, it is by no means the end of the road, just a bit of a rougher one.
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Arsonade is saving up for a new box of hummus, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 19:25,
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I think it was me who posted the pics
It was of a very old mental hospital that worked in just before it closed down. The majority of them are modern, clean and with pretty good facilities. Not saying they can't be scary at times, they're just not old red brick asylums.
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Sheriff John Bunnell https://twitter.com/thewonderfulgam, Mon 7 Mar 2011, 0:16,
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