As usual, I'm late to the table. While looking for something interesting to watch last night, I stumbled upon this on one of our local PBS channels.
Such a sad case. The least these mental health facilities could do is to notify family members when they release a patient!
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Thanks so much for your response. I thought I was all alone last night!
Seriously though, what you say makes perfect sense. So many of these people were released and left to their own devices, and look at what happened. I'd like to see that cases like this get the people in office to think about the laws and make some necessary changes!
Thank you for that link. I was telling my husband and a friend about this. I'd like for them to see this.
Sounds like something I need to add to my watch list. I'm always on the lookout for things to watch.
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Sounds interesting. Thanks!
shareDalton is right. It's very haunting. It has stayed with me all day like a dream you have and little bits of it keep coming to you the next day.
shareLaws regarding patient rights aren't the only reason the mentally ill are wandering the streets in the modern US, there's also the lack of funding for psychiatric hospitals. The states don't want to assume the expense, and the federal government doesn't want to increase any sort of social services. There's no way the private sector will assume the expense, because there's no way to make money off the mentally ill unless the government provides funds.
This is IMHO why the laws regarding patient rights have never been changed - governments have looked at the problem and concluded that letting the mentally ill wander the streets costs almost nothing, while building, staffing, and running large numbers of full-service psychiatric hospitals is a huge expense. Moreover, assuming responsibility for the mentally ill means the risk of lawsuits from people who were held against their will or if the care isn't adequate, while letting the mentally ill wander the streets costs practically nothing.
This is the world we live in.
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If this particular tragedy happened entirely because of the "patient rights" laws in place and not because adequate treatment wasn't available, then IMHO it's a slightly unusual case.
I'm somewhat involved with the mental health industry, such as it is, and FYI these days it's all "Treat 'em and street 'em": That is, hospitalize and treat the patients until their symptoms begin to abate and then release them to an uncaring world, where they aren't usually able to keep on the medications that have decreased their symptoms, and all the miseries of poverty and homelessness. It's become standard to release people who can't care for themselves, because places in psychiatric hospitals are in such high demand that only people who are an immediate danger to themselves or others can be given space. It's an absolute disgrace, and unworthy of a society with any claim to general decency. And again, the reason things have been going on this way for decades is MONEY, nobody wants to change the laws or improve care because it'd cost money.
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Of course the de-institutionalization movement was a fiasco, what I'm saying is the reason that nobody's done anything to change that fiasco was MONEY.
There are millions of people who will never be able to care for themselves, they don't deserve to be abandoned to the streets and they don't deserved to be imprisoned and abused, but nobody wants to come up with the money to help them. Nobody wants to fund hospitals, nobody wants to fund residential facilities, hell, nobody wants to fund a damn thing that might get the mentally ill off the streets. And a huge portion of the public freaks out at any suggestion of raising taxes, even if the purpose is something that everyone wants - getting the mentally ill out of their back yards.
I watched it this morning. Haunting is a good word to describe it. It's heartbreaking that there were neighbors right across the road who could have helped if they'd only known she was there.
shareI think so too. I feel for her sister. Even she said she must have driven by that house at least 50 times during that period.
I feel for her daughter as well. Watching her and listening to her, I'd say she is still trying to work through so many issues. How does one ever learn to live with what she must have gone through with her mother while growing up? How do you even deal with the way in which your mother spent the last months of her life?
This documentary is certainly thought provoking to say the least.
Another thought that just crossed my mind is the house. The co owners were there to pick some things up when she was inside the house. she must have hid well.
I can't help wondering about what is going on with that house now. Those two had grown up on that farm. The house was obviously left to them. I have to wonder if it still stands empty or if it has been sold. I tried searching, but haven't found anything on it. If you or anyone else knows anything, I'd be curious to know.
Somehow, I don't think living there would bother me. She died there tragically, but from what she wrote in that journal, she obviously felt safe there. In her mind, I think she felt safer than she would have anywhere else at that time.
This may stay with me for a while.
Another "if only" moment was the hearing for guardianship. If Joan had been granted guardianship she might have been able to get more help for Linda and keep her on her meds. It's sad that the judge didn't get to see Linda as she really was or he might have ruled differently. I wish Linda's attorney could have spoken up, but s/he has to do what the client wants, I guess. Or perhaps s/he was an overworked public defender who didn't really know the situation.
I sensed some resentment in Caitlin, Linda's daughter. I don't blame her, though. She had a tough childhood that started out good, but then went haywire and the world she knew blew up. The teen years are hard enough, but to lose your mother to mental illness at that time, well, I can only imagine how difficult that was. There's still a lot of stigma attached to mental illness. But I do think Caitlin is coming to terms with her mother's illness and that she (Linda) had no control over it.