"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
oups.com...
Personally, I would classify Charles Manson as bad, and John Hinkley
as deranged, not necessarily bad, drug users as sick, and a good
portion of those in jail as mentally defective. Each classification
requires different treatment, but none deserve to be abused.

Larry, let's talk turkey here. This problem was entirely created by
liberal (what a stupid, inaccurate name!) politicians who -- in the
name of "personal rights" -- have made it completely impossible to
commit someone to a mental hospital against their will.

Because it would be a violation of their personal "rights" to send
them to a place where they can get the help they so desperately need,
they are placed in "out-patient care" -- with no enforcement or
repercussions if they don't show up for treatment.

And, of course, they don't show up. Nor do they take their meds,
which make them feel worse, not better.

So, what happens to these people? They fall through the cracks of
society. After years of drug or alcohol abuse, they are so damaged
that they are incapable of holding a job. Their abuse also triggers
long bouts of deep depression, when they are completely unable to
function in society.

With no real help available (again, thanks to the "liberal"
politicians, who have closed all the mental hospitals) they have two
very real, very awful choices: Starve, or steal. We all know what
their activity of choice is -- you or I would make the same choice.

They then end up in prison, mixed in with the truly awful, truly
violent criminals. It's a horrible, awful, terribly unfair system that
has been ENTIRELY created by well-meaning people just like YOU, who
thought that the minor abuses then taking place in the mental
hospitals merited their complete and utter elimination.

Blaming this on "Bush" or the "Religious Right" is so completely
illogical, and so completely ludicrous, that I just had to speak up.
This problem is just one of many stemming from Lyndon Johnson's "Great
Society", which wreaked havoc on so much of our nation -- all done
with the best of intentions by naive, inexperienced -- no, let's say
it like it is -- STUPID people.

Why/how do I know all this? Because I've got a 57-year old drug and
alcohol-dependent sister who has spent much of her adult life in and
out of "treatment programs", and is now facing prison time for repeat
drunken driving.

She's lost her home, her career, her husband, her son, and everything
she held dear, thanks to her illness. Over the years our family has
tried on multiple occasions to get her the help she so desperately
needed, to no avail.

Under the system folks like you created, her "rights" as a mentally
ill person have guaranteed her a life of living hell. Because she
can't be committed, no help is possible until she demands it -- and
waiting for a mentally ill person to recognize that they need help can
be a long wait, indeed.

snip

Jay, I feel your pain (literally) because of similar situation in my family.
There was a fairly in-depth discussion of this topic on one of the other
newsgroups I frequent. IIRC, the peak of mental incarcerations occured in
1953, and the closing of such facilities was been more or less linear since
then. So one can't really blame
Bush/Clinton/Bush/Reagan/Carter/Ford/Nixon/Johnson/Kennedy/Eisenhour unless
you blame them all. And it was a Supreme Court decision that people
couldn't be commited unless there was clearly demonstrated that they were a
danger to themselves or others that caused the sharp increase in homeless
people in the 1980s. If people realized how many people used to be locked
up in mental institutions, they would be shocked. I can imagine the attacks
from both the "left" and the "right" if Bush proposed a Constitutional
Amendment to allow people to be locked up "for their own good", but I be for
it. When these people aren't locked up, the rest of us are the ones that
live in virtual prisons.