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Dr. Bob is Robert Hsiung, MD,
bob@dr-bob.orgShown: posts 1 to 2 of 2. This is the beginning of the thread.
Posted by Squiggles on March 22, 2006, at 8:35:21
"Deinstitutionalization, that rational-sounding process, was never planned, nor was it even named until twenty years after it happened. What's more, it had *nothing* to do with what patients did or didn't need, and everything to do with money..... The irony of deinsitutionalization,
I decided, was that even as it represented a self-serving, politically motivated, fiscally oriented move on the part of government to rid itself of an unrewarding and expensive
public burden, so too it reflected a high-minded, idealistic, happy faith in our society's willingness to tolerate the presence of the bizarre and the deviant...."[p. xiv Preface of "Out of Bedlam"]
I've been reading her book. She was a social worker in N.Y. for public health. She is a passionate and very intelligent writer on the topic of deinstitutionalization.
But I've got to tell you, I have changed my mind about this matter. Except for helpless and homeless people who are mentally ill, and have no family or social support, ending up in jails, the hospital ward must necessarily be a controlling, opressive place to be. Every man cherishes his privacy and freedom, and I think given
the economic restraints, you would lose it there.I don't know what I was thinking - something out of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" or Fitzgerald's sanitoria
for the rich - a beautiful Victorian buidling,
spotless, quiet, with nurses and drs. attending to
every detail of your condition, and Mozart music streaming through the speakers; or a large country house with a huge veranda and sprawling green lawns with waiters serving chamomile tea and orderlies pushing perambulators.Nah, that was just a dream. I think that my dr.
probably understands these things and that is why
he gives me so much freedom. On *this* point, I have to concede defeat to David Oaks, Dr. Szatz, et al/Squiggles
Posted by AuntieMel on March 22, 2006, at 9:42:35
In reply to Ann Braden Johnson, posted by Squiggles on March 22, 2006, at 8:35:21
Very interesting. I'll have to get the book.
Deinstitutionalization always sounded like it would be a good thing, and it always played well to the masses. Who hasn't heard horror stories about people being locked up against their will?
But in practice, so many people went without help because they couldn't be compelled to get it. The catch-22 - if a person has a mental illness, does he really know what is best? Where to draw the line?
The current line of 'must be about to harm self or others' doesn't quite make it.
And we should all think of those conditions (Bedlam) when we talk of people who "got off" by pleading insanity.
This is the end of the thread.
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