As the house of god says, they can always hurt you more.
The system is so bad you can’t believe it until you have to navigate it.
Even with no financial constraints it can be nearly impossible to get someone the help they need. The only criteria is “are they suicidal or threatening violence.” And even then if you can’t prove it, you almost certainly will fail.
Even when the patient agrees they are in crisis it’s close to impossible to get in to see a psychiatrist, which means it’s impossible to get meds. You have to go to the ER and wait, often several days, and hope a psych bed opens up. During which they can change their mind at any time. Total nightmare.
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You’d be even more angered when you saw how many resources were wasted by a specific high utilizer or two who abuses the system. I regularly see one guy who takes a bed 5-10 days per month, and leaves when he gets a regularly scheduled check.
I have had luck going to urgent care and or pill mills, explaining my history and what’s been prescribed in the past, explaining where I’m at mentally and what’s at stake (losing job, etc) and they’ve prescribed me what I needed while I waited months to see a psychiatrist, and followed up for a refill visit every 30 days till shrink appt
Of course I have the “luxury” of having navigated the system many times, and being charismatic and white male enough to get those scrips
Last year I was extemely reckless one night and got post exposure prophylaxis HIV pills prescribed electronically by an online pill mill the next day because the ER and urgent care would not give me the PEP and it was days until the HIV community clinic was seeing patients again. It’s like twice a month half days lol
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yea i mean i could write a lot about this of course, but it’s truly hopeless. i have desperately been seeking treatment for a chronic mental health issue, have tried every drug and therapy known to man, every time i see a new one it is an initial 3-4 month wait, followed by 8-12 weeks of testing out new meds and observing results, few months more of monitoring, and god help you if you get the blackbox warning like I do every time, or are actually in a severe crisis, which i have been off/on for 6 months now. I have the best insurance and essentially unlimited resources to throw at this problem and I’m barely above homeless at this point, truly.
it astounds me that anyone can look at the system as it exists now and conclude it can get worse - but I have a pretty firsthand view of it.
I participate in a lot of support groups as a participant and to give advice and a common theme since covid has been a real exacerbation of existing mental health issues, in addition to people experiencing them for the first time very late in their lives. You’re seeing wait times for psychiatrists and therapists creep up slowly for a few years now. It’s truly ridiculous now, at least where I am. even if you want and afford care you can’t get it easily at all.
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I’m sorry you’re going through that. I’ve seen up close what it entails.
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I am just not capable of the same kind of anger towards those individuals as I have for the system
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it’s like that in a lot of areas of medicine that are for whatever reason deemed “less important” than primary care. i only just now in my life could afford the dentist, naturally I had tons of problems that were luckily reversible. to get me to go in there though took the most horrifically painful abscessed tooth that spread into my jaw, the pain was so horrific I redefined what I thought a 10/10 on the pain scale was and STILL it took me 4 days to get into an emergency clinic, promising all cash, and in the end they would not treat me because that day I had forgotten my driver’s license. i had kind of a bewildered “what am i supposed to do?” response to which the answer was basically “i dunno suffer i guess.” ended up taking 2 additional weeks to get the root canal.
so yea as bad as my experience sometimes is i know it’s 10000x worse for people without the resources i have
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Fair. It gets a lot harder when they abuse you personally.
I had about a six week stretch in 2019 when I thought “I bet this is how healthy people often feel” that I don’t remember ever having even in childhood
Striving to get back to that place and see how long I can make it last this time
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I bet. But for real, part of my problem is accepting abuse without recognizing it or blaming the abuser
Paging the Onion
My current opinion is only a mass shooting in the actual congress will result in anything
https://twitter.com/jonlemire/status/1532132614622044162?s=21&t=ob36ruitWf2h7Amh5iB02A
Government treating mentally ill people worse is the doctor actually following through on the sectioning threats made:
https://twitter.com/noliewithbtc/status/1532100681070428162?s=21&t=F9KVyKq4cPRxwQleHV5Tyw
Hey ASSHOLES, it’s been 13 years and my kid wasn’t even murdered. Not done grieving yet.
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Next up, “arm the nurses”
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Our political system is non functioning
https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1532142237517107200?s=21&t=ob36ruitWf2h7Amh5iB02A
And you probably missed this one
https://twitter.com/chrismurphyct/status/1531778777881116673?s=21&t=ob36ruitWf2h7Amh5iB02A
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So the logic for “fortifying the schools” is that the shooters are too stupid to go after soft targets? The Buffalo shooter went on a scouting trip. The Las Vegas shooter had quite a complex plan, didn’t he? Doesn’t seem likely we can “fortify” everything. Maybe let’s reduce the guns…or no?
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Nope, can’t reduce or even regulate the guns, because then we might end up living in a dystopian hellscape.
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Even then, it would depend on who gets shot.
Let’s first see how fewer doors plays out.
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