EDITORIAL: Time to rethink treatment of some mental illness?
Daily OklahomanDec 18, 2018
While some groups estimate up to 50 percent of people may have a diagnosable mental illness during their lifetime, Mental Illness Policy Org focuses on the 4 percent of adults "who are most seriously ill, mainly suffering from schizophrenia and treatment-resistant forms of bipolar disorder," according to the group's website.
Citing recent coverage in The New York Times, Jaffe notes civil liberties advocates have pressured various entities into signing
Among some activists, the default presumption is that any form of institutionalized living is automatically the worst option for treating those with mental illness. Jaffe contends this has led some activists to "push states to move thousands of mentally ill people out of adult homes and hospitals that provide intensive services and into independent living ..."
But for those with the most serious forms of mental illness, Jaffe argues some form of institutionalized care is far better. The failure rate for those pushed into independent living, he says, may be as high as 50 percent, according to clinicians "and others on the front lines."
In many instances, Jaffe points out that the seriously mentally ill are still institutionalized, but in a very different setting.
"Ten times as many seriously mentally ill people are now incarcerated as hospitalized," Jaffe writes.
That's a problem seen in
"Creating more psychiatric beds will help reduce reliance on streets, jails, prisons and morgues as our overflow valve," Jaffe writes.
The involuntary commitment of an individual to psychiatric care isn't to be taken lightly. But one must question if it's more compassionate to abstain from such commitments if the result is prison for the most seriously ill. While most people with mental illness don't need any form of institutionalization, Jaffe makes a strong case that for a subset of the most seriously ill, the failure to force treatment is a failure to care.
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