Get News & Views Updates
Most Popular This Week
- Scientists Confirm: Arctic Sea Ice 'Collapse' at Our Door
- 'Let Us Not Be Deceived': Cornel West Names Obama as 'War Criminal'
- Quinoa: To Buy or Not to Buy... Is This the Right Question?
- So God Made A Factory Farmer...And Pesticides. And Subsidies. And Corn Syrup. And Mexicans.
- Who Can Own Life? Farmer vs. Monsanto Before US High Court
Popular content
Today's Top News
Mental Illness, Tucson and the Urgent Need for Universal Care
I don’t know whether Jared Loughner had health insurance coverage, but the terrible events in Tucson got me thinking about an uninsured patient I saw last month at a massive one-day mobile free clinic for the uninsured in North Carolina. This was an event sponsored by the apolitical non-partisan National Association of Free Clinics (NAFC) and it delivered free care to over 1,200 uninsured people.
I saw a very worried mother with her 22-year-old son. He had told her a week earlier that he was hearing voices that were telling him to hurt people. He told her he’d actually been hearing voices for seven years, but as it embarrassed him and they were never very scary he’d not mentioned it until last week. Now this new message was terrifying him, and the voices were becoming increasing compelling. He told me that he didn’t know how much longer he could continue to hold them off.
His mother had tried calling several local psychiatrists but they all refused to see him without insurance. She was reluctant to go to the local emergency room as they had given her a really difficult time in the past due to her own lack of insurance. She was about at her wits’ end, and then saw a notice about NAFC’s one-day free clinic.
When I saw him there, he was clearly very agitated and worried. He looked to me like he could start taking action at any moment. Fortunately, we had a psychiatrist who was also volunteering his day there and we were able to get him immediately into an aggressive care plan.
We all know that lack of health insurance in America is a tremendous problem. Some 45,000 Americans die every year from lack of insurance. More than half of bankruptcies are from unpredictably high medical costs. Our businesses struggle to compete globally with other nations that have more rationally solved this problem.
I don’t believe it’s nearly as well recognized, however, that when our neighbors don’t have insurance, we’re all at risk too. My patient’s lack of insurance jeopardized each and every one of us.
Partial solutions and incomplete answers are just not acceptable in a country like ours. We simply have to find a way to have universal access to high quality of care, or we will all continue to pay the price, sometimes at point-blank range.
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
97 Comments so far
Show All"I don’t believe it’s nearly as well recognized, however, that when our neighbors don’t have insurance, we’re all at risk too. My patient’s lack of insurance jeopardized each and every one of us."
This can't be stated enough. Not just in the case of the potentially violent mental patients, but also in the area of communicable diseases. As far as societal health goes we really are all in it together.
Unfortunately we have some seriously misguided politicians that don't understand this. I wonder how our "health care" system would handle a major infectious disease breakout like 1918 flu pandemic? There are a lot of folks out there that think that healthcare is not a "right", so do we not treat the uninsured and let the infection spread? And if we do treat them isn't this proof of the need for a basic universal health care system?
Horace, or any other folks from the right, I would like to hear what you have to say about this.
Yup.
Deplorable! This country's moral compass is lost even though claims of being a "christian country" persist. If this were the son of a congressperson....
Were doing much the same in CA, Cutting back on Mental HealthCare. I'll take care of it self Right? I mean the last 8yrs we had a sociopath as governor and were ok?
Reality has become a mental illness, only degree matters.
>^^<
This article shows frightening naivete. Worse, it scares the general reader into seeing a potential mass killer in some person behaving =weirdly=. And this is chain linked to lack of health care insurance. If we don't have it, someone is going to stick a gun in our faces and pull the trigger. In today's world of class warfare we are more likely to be shot by a stressed police officer, behaving weirdly.
While I am a lifelong advocate of universal health care [having lived under such a system for 30 years], this justification for it is preposterous.
To family physician Dr. Weisbart I recommend a =classic= reference work by Dr. Thomas Szasz entitled "Psychiatric Justice". I keep a copy of it on my bookshelf, with my two foot library of books on the sociology of medicine, health care systems, and possible reform.
Trylon
Well said amidst the cheap rhetoric being floated about this.
==Of course not all weird people are violent, but if voices are telling them to hurt people, then they *are* potentially violent.==
And you know this - - - how?
01. Have you worked in mental hospitals as a Clinical Psychologist? I have.
02 Have you interviewed recently-admitted persons about their stream of consciousness and auditory or visual or olfactory experience? I have.
03 Have you administered any traditional and validated tests of psychosis to someone chained to a metal bed by police handcuffs? I have.
04 Have you signed your name below diagnoses chosen carefully from the A.P.A. Diagnostic & Statistical Manuals? I have, and I have had to be prepared to defend them, in a court if necessary.
05 Have you been tasked to get long term, institutionalized mental patients out of hospital and living in community half-way homes? I was, and have dealt with the wall of community fear and prejudice and HATRED.
No, you haven't -AND NEITHER HAS THE AUTHOR OF THIS ARTICLE. Have you ever seen an epileptic that cops beat the shit out of with sticks and boots? I have. Someone with Tourettes disease? I have. Technology has now given us Tasers to kill them with, blaming their death upon the victims. As Woody Allan says: "God is either cruel or incompetent."
It is not the job of a HEALTH CARE SYSTEM to deal with disturbed mentation unless it is the product of a physical disorder. Canada, with universal health care, has a separate Mental Health System. So do all 50 states so far as I know. And they are staffed by STATE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, not psychiatrists in private practice. And these facilities are dangerous as hell to freedom - as Dr. thomas Szasz has epent a long career demonstrating to those who will pay attention. That is WHY "Psychiatric Justice" is a classic REFERENCE.
Reform of Health Care is in no way related to the Tucson multiple shootings.
Trylon
Repeat t.i.d. - "This thing I sit on is an ass. THAT is a hole in the ground."
When you least expect it, there will be a pop quiz.
Trylon
Well said.
"And they are staffed by STATE MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS, not psychiatrists in private practice"
Thats the God's truth here in Texas I can say for sure. Terrel State hospital has become just a storage facility. We will not now get a Single payer system thanks to the idiots in charge, but we will get something different after the republicans get through...just not what you describe for sure and not a Single Payer system.
My first exposure to mental hospitals was in Chicago, 1963-1964, as an undergrad student taking Introductory Clinical Psychology. When my supervisor asked me what I felt I had learned, I replied: "Mental hospitals are warehouses of the unloved." This observation astonished her.
My experience is bi-national, working in govt asylums both in northern Ontario and east central New Jersey. The facilities were exactly alike in attracting to their staff the bottommost 20 persons in each class of graduating M.D. psychiatrists. I've seen sad hallways of sad humans before and after their sad turn to receive electroshock treatments. In NJ, I was assigned to health care Quality Control, which was sort of like skeining a cesspool with a small sieve.
Since 19th century beginnings, Psychiatry has always been a bullshit profession. Freud was a medical P.T. Barnum who fooled most of the people most of the time. That is why I admire Dr. Szasz - for holding a mirror to his colleagues. We know more about the planet Jupiter than we know about what is really wrong with persons held long term inside what are misnamed mental hospitals. These facilities are a living hell from 23:00 to 06:00 - things happen inside these =care= institutions that would make you puke.
Only persons who have never worked in them can arrogantly claim humans are/were =better off= inside them. That's smug rationalization.
Electroshock is still being used. It made a comeback in the 90s, when the APA informed us that while past practice was awful, they know how to do it right now. My aunt underwent three sessions, and lost all memory of raising her five children. It didn't do a thing for her depression, though.
Any honest psychiatrist today will tell you that one-third of patients get better, one-third stay the same, and one-third get worse, and in that he's being delusionally optimistic. Even so, if you had a physical ailment and were given such statistics for your outcome, would you take the medicine? Do you know how remarkably deceptive clinical trials are for psychotropics? If this is what you call "scientific," you've been fooled. Big Pharma, the puppet-master of the psychiatric profession, uses nice scientific-sounding language, but look underneath and you see true psychobabble.
Read Robert Whitaker's 2010 review of the psychiatric data showing that mental health actually degrades under long-term psychiatric care, a book called "Anatomy of an Epidemic."
People who think the mental health industry has insanity under control are truly delusional, and should be locked up in institutions with nothing to do all day but watch Fox and take neuroleptics.
The mentally ill have much more to fear from so-called normal people than vice-versa.
Thank you for your post. Szasz should be read by everyone. I usually recommend Whitaker, as he's more recent and has sorted the data pretty well.
While I find people on CD skeptical generally, I find them really credulous on this issue, and sometimes blithely cruel.
See, they're scared of the "crazy" people, and want the police to taser them or even shoot them in the head, as they do with impunity. Or at least lock them up. I keep telling these CDers that there's no cure for sociopathy, the real danger.
Tell it to Dr. Szasz. Copy me. Copy me on his reply to you. Thanks in advance.
Dennab,
Thank you.
As he would say, "Show me the test results?"
For 95% or so of all such "illness", there are none.
The previous poster is correct, there is no real 'science' in mental health. What you cannot test, cannot falsify, and what you openly admit you don't understand, cannot be classed as science.
No-one denies mental health problems exist. The question is if the current approach or our current knowledge are of any use? The answer appears to be No.
What we DO have evidence of is Big Pharma's grasping hand, and of ineffective and dangerous drugs being prescribed virtually at random.
Sometimes, just to be sure, you might see a 2nd doctor for a 2nd opinion, to confirm what the 1st doc' said - or perhaps uncover something else. Generally, we trust the 1st one and when seeking a 2nd opinion it's usually the same outcome.
Where mental 'medicine' is concerned, you can see a dozen shrinks and get a dozen different diagnoses from each - though most will prescribe the same and most profitable medicines.
Smart premises and smart suits, or charging a lot of money (but I repeat myself), doesn't alter the fact that where mental health is concerned, we're still pretty much in the hands of witch-doctors.
I'd even argue that the early witch-doctors were more effective, as people believed in magic back then. Just as voodoo, with no physical touch, could cause someone to curl up and die, it could also cure.
Belief is a powerful thing.
N.
The richest and most powerful country on earth has a despicably and capriciously cruel health care system. We have the best health care system in the world if you are wealthy or have great health insurance from your job, otherwise tough luck and drop dead which is the case for too many Americans. Mental health, dental care and regular vision check ups are not even part of the discussion in too many cases. Dr. Weisbart highlights a serious problem that has not been very much discussed in recent years.
Would health insurance have done Jared Loughner any good if he had it? Az governor Jan Brewer cut state mental health services by 37% in 2010. The system was already among the worst in the nation. My advice to anybody who hears voices in Arizona would be to move to Colorado.
We can all thank Pelosi and Obama for short circuiting real Health Care reform for our nation. By passing an unworkable, unconstitutional law they have set us back another decade.
I am sick of hearing this canard about no insurance, no health care. What bull shit...pardon me, but lies set my teeth on edge. No one goes without health care, not even illegal aliens in our country are refused care (they are now excluded from HC in France)it's just not good health care, its eposidic health care, mostly in our emergency rooms (many with Medicaid use them anyway) the most expensive kind to provide.
And any of you folks that believe that even if Obamacare had survived (it won't) that dumping 20 million or so in Medicaid was going to provide medical care need to have your heads examined.
Coverage...Health Insurance is not the same as medical care. Approaching 50% of doctor's already refuse Medicaid. If the assholes here in Texas pass their cut's in Medicaid we will have over 50% refusing it.
There is a disease spreading on the progressive blogosphere. Even Donna Smith is buying into the wrong idea that repealing Obamacare is wrong just because the Republicans are doing it. You and I know that small businesses and self-employed people are taxed to death and that paying for health insurance hurts them more than it does big company employers. The GOP is only cashing in on this. I don't expect the Republicans to succeed in repealing this unconstitutional bill but anything can happen within the next two years like you've always implied.
Bingo.
In Canada, you have choice to go wherever you want.
Canada does NOT have socilized medicine. Canada has Medicare for all--paid for by the government but the care is privately delivered for the most part. Most Canadian doctors are private practicing physicians.
The UK, on the otherhand, is socialized medicine. The doctors, nurses-- almost all health care professionals are employees of the government.
There are private doctors and clinics in the UK--but the NHS does not cover the cost--one must pay out of pocket.
These private clinics/doctors are usually alternative medical practioners.
You do have the option to seek care out of the NHS.
Both systems beat the US, hands down, as reported by the WHO.
The US ranks 37th in the world for health care delivery.
Where's the freedom in that?
Your health insurance company tells you where you can go or pay out of pocket.
I have no real freedom for the pleasure of paying over 400.00 per month.
Plus, I have been refused services and care.
I'll take the Candian system over the US--anyday.
I lived in Montreal as a child--I experienced Canadian medicine--it's better there.
Mightymite has hit the nail on the head with his statement about Medicaid.
Medicaid is the bottom of the barrell medical care, very few good doctors even take this welfare grade insurance.
Those who stand with Medicaid as a good thing are just phony progressives.
Medicaid is SEGREGATED MEDICINE.
Why should anyone be placed on a particular health plan because they are economically disenfranchised or of a lower socioeconomic status? WHY?
Don't you Obamabots believe in equality for ALL?
If the answer is YES, why then would you support such a shitty bill?
How would you like to be placed on Medicaid so everyone and their brother knows your socioeconomic status?
Real FAIR and just medicine is an improved MEDICARE FOR ALL US Citizens who want to enroll--regardless of their income.
EVERYONE deserves good EQUAL quality medical care.
Obamacare sucks ass. Let's pray it dies on the vine soon.
http://www.pnhp.org/
Do they teach reading in Canada? MM said just that, and gave a clear reason why Obummers corporate welfare plan for health insurance was a problem?
Or do you need it in French?
>^^<
Access to health care, mental or physical, is unquestionably better than the status quo of no access. Or, more accurately, a status quo in which access and QUALITY of health care is primarily a function of what a person can afford to pay.
But universal mental health care is no panacea when an entire society and culture is itself insane.
And is anyone else puzzled by a "buried lede" in this brief account? The author informs us that "we were able to get him immediately into an aggressive care plan" by virtue of the 22-year-old man's mom taking him to a one-day clinic.
This raises a multitude of questions, and it would have behooved the author to go into much greater detail about how this was accomplished, and what it might signify for the general population of persons requiring or seeking mental health care.
It's reasonable to assume that this is an exceptional outcome. Is it because the young man's symptoms and history were egregious? Did the volunteer psychiatrist take him on as a patient on a "pro bono" basis? Or did he merely provide a diagnosis that facilitated the patient's admission into a community mental health program?
Some clarifying information about the "aggressive care plan" would have been helpful, too; it could mean a Big-Pharmacentric crash course: medicating the guy into zombiehood to turn off those voices and dam up his stream of consciousness to a trickle, or slow drip.
I'm sure the author didn't mean to be glib or facile, but I'm curious and mildly skeptical of this throwaway "problem solved!" reference.
Obedient Servant
As well you should be.
Indeed.
Here's some good reads on the mental health care system we have:
Toxic Psychiatry by Peter Breggin, MD
Confessions of a Drug Pusher by Gwen Olsen
The Anti-Depressant Fact Book, by Peter Breggin, MD
"He had told her a week earlier that he was hearing voices that were telling him to hurt people."
Just take away his radio (or don't let him listen to Phlegm Dreck, Sham Sannity, Drug Rush, Savage and others of their ilk).
in a capitalist society, sanity is madness, and mental sickness is normal.
Thank you, this is correct. Lately their back pushing depression as an ilness like polio.
For instance take a normal hard working patient, stick a 6in knife into his upped spine, set it so grates slightly in the spine. Leave it there for 10+ yrs give this person only pain killers, mild ones at that. After 10yrs the person becomes mildly sucidal, based wholely on pain levels. In this case is depression a disease. or caused by 10yrs of barely managed pain!
Welcome to the world of Government Managed Privatized Medicine. Workers-Comp.
My World, and yes I'm also supposed to work a 40hr week. (Torture) I assure you.
>^^<
Emails, petitions, calls, visits, demos, protests, rallies, civil disobedience have not awakened our people nor threatened the Corporatist-Militarist Ruling Class.
Maybe this will:
Spread the word:
GENERAL STRIKE: 11/11/11
If you work, stay home that day.
If you don't work, don't shop that day.
The lack of health insurance IS NOT THE PROBLEM!
It's the lack of HEALTH CARE that is the problem.
Health insurance companies and the politicians who support them ARE THE PROBLEM!
Good grief......
If you drink, don't post.
wadosy sez: "well, i'm four beers into a 12-pack, and pretty soon, i'm gonna start saying what i really think.
then you assholes will be in real trouble."
wadosy, what you really think is a morass of anti-semitic nonsense. Big Jews and Little Jews, Jews responsible for all the world's problems...
What you need to do is have a few more beers and try to figure out how that ugliness got inside you.
But please, don't post until you're sober.
Hey wadosi!
Your anti-Jewish posts on here would do some of those average, everyday Southie and Charlestown natives, as well as the late Boston City councilors, Albert "Dapper" O'Neil and James Kelly, and the late Boston School Committeewomen Louise Day Hicks and Elvira (Pixie) Palladino mighty, mighty proud!
That being said, wadosi, here's a suggestion; Either clean up your act or find another place to spread your stupid-assed bigotry around. It's got no place what. so. ever here on CD. Thanks.
Hey wadosi!
Your anti-Jewish posts on here would do some of those average, everyday Southie and Charlestown natives, as well as the late Boston City councilors, Albert "Dapper" O'Neil and James Kelly, and the late Boston School Committeewomen Louise Day Hicks and Elvira (Pixie) Palladino mighty, mighty proud!
That being said, wadosi, here's a suggestion; Either clean up your act or find another place to spread your stupid-assed bigotry around. It's got no place what. so. ever here on CD. Thanks.