It's not like you just walk up to the counter and order mental health care.
"hmmmm, what do I want, what do I want? I'm feeling a little CRAZY today! Something different... I'll try the mental health care I think. Sauce on the side?"
No, you go to a mental health care facility and say that my son has been kicked out of college due to severe mental disturbance, can't hold even the simplest job, has no lasting friendships and has acted strangely for years now and we think he needs help.
Didn't he go to one Walmart and get denied because the guy working thought he was acting odd, only to go to another and get what he needed? Is that true?
That first Wal-Mart store is denying this. They say he wasn't denied, he just left on his own before completing the transaction.
Maybe they don't want potential customers to be discouraged from going there.
It's not like you just walk up to the counter and order mental health care.
"hmmmm, what do I want, what do I want? I'm feeling a little CRAZY today! Something different... I'll try the mental health care I think. Sauce on the side?"
No, you go to a mental health care facility and say that my son has been kicked out of college due to severe mental disturbance, can't hold even the simplest job, has no lasting friendships and has acted strangely for years now and we think he needs help.
As someone who works in a residential mental health facility, I have seen the evidence of how health insurance companies fuck up many people's treatment. Most insurance companies will only certify someone for one month of treatment. Only if a patient seems to be getting worse will an insurance company ok further tratment. If a patient shows any improvement utilization review has to jump through hoops to prove that the patient still needs further treatment. Health insurance companies and mental health treatment are not a good combo...basically insurance plans don't want to pay for it...so what are people supposed to do? No one is "cured" in 30 days...
I bet Palin didn't even know the historical and racist connotations of the term "blood libel" until she checked her Tweets this morning. Using a pejorative term implying that Jews murder children in the same speech in which she offers her condolences to the family of a slain child and a Congresswoman who happens to be Jewish was a calculated move on the part of her team. Her writers are exploiting the fact that she probably won't Google certain terms and phrases before she's asked to say them, but a marketing strategy edging on cluelessness seems to be working thus far. Though her team doesn't want fingers pointed at them, they'll take the spotlight if it shines on them.
It's not like you just walk up to the counter and order mental health care.
"hmmmm, what do I want, what do I want? I'm feeling a little CRAZY today! Something different... I'll try the mental health care I think. Sauce on the side?"
No, you go to a mental health care facility and say that my son has been kicked out of college due to severe mental disturbance, can't hold even the simplest job, has no lasting friendships and has acted strangely for years now and we think he needs help.
They might even have a counter.
And then they ask if your son is a minor.
Yeah, easy as buying a BK double. Or a Glock.
I worked at a Wal-Mart in high school in the late 80s, and for a while, I worked in Sporting Goods, which means that I sold handguns and rifles. I distinctly recall that potential customers had to fill out a form before they could buy a gun and that one of the questions was, "Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective?" One woman paused upon reading that question and asked me if she could still buy the gun if she answered "yes." I told her that she could not, then she got embarrassed, excused herself, and left. I've always appreciated her honesty, but I also understand that she was most likely the exception.
I'm not sure what Wal-Mart's policy is these days, but I can tell you for a fact that it was frighteningly easy to buy handguns there back in the day.
Right - Loughner would have had to commit himself. That's my understanding anyway.
You can get treatment without being committed.
And my initial point was that there were no obstacles for him to get treatment other than himself or his parents not wanting to.
I'm just saying that it supposes a lot to imagine someone like Loughner seeking out help for himself.
It is not easy for a parent or friend to get someone else help once they're of legal age. In this case, the parents would've needed to go before a judge as I understand it. It's not a sure thing.
The ONE easy thing that can prevent this kind of tragedy, as crazy as anyone wants to be, is to not be able to buy a gun easily.
It's doubtful that Loughner would've ever walked himself into treatment. Everybody worried he would get a gun. The "gun rights vs mental health care" argument is a false equivalency.
As someone who works in a residential mental health facility, I have seen the evidence of how health insurance companies fuck up many people's treatment. Most insurance companies will only certify someone for one month of treatment. Only if a patient seems to be getting worse will an insurance company ok further tratment. If a patient shows any improvement utilization review has to jump through hoops to prove that the patient still needs further treatment. Health insurance companies and mental health treatment are not a good combo...basically insurance plans don't want to pay for it...so what are people supposed to do? No one is "cured" in 30 days...
Do you typically have enough open beds to accommodate the need?
Sounds like you might given the fact that insurance co. are kicking people out after 30 days.
I bet Palin didn't even know the historical and racist connotations of the term "blood libel" until she checked her Tweets this morning. Using a pejorative term implying that Jews murder children in the same speech in which she offers her condolences to the family of a slain child and a Congresswoman who happens to be Jewish was a calculated move on the part of her team. Her writers are exploiting the fact that she probably won't Google certain terms and phrases before she's asked to say them, but a marketing strategy edging on cluelessness seems to be working thus far. Though her team doesn't want fingers pointed at them, they'll take the spotlight if it shines on them.
I'd confidently bet Palin just thought "blood libel" means "really, really, really bad libel" (or, to paraphrase Bender, "the worst kind of libel--the kind about me!"). But I wouldn't be surprised if her speechwriter know what it means and deployed it purposely--remember that in their view, conservatives in general and Sarah Palin in particular are always the victims of something.
On Monday, when a team of Tucson doctors held a press conference to delicately describe the condition of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords???s traumatized brain, one of them said an interesting thing.
Concentrating as doctors do, not on the body politic but on the body before him, he described how the wounded congresswoman was responding to simple commands, and said he found it very hopeful that the ???centres of her brain are communicating with one another.???
Ms. Giffords, a glowingly ambitious and by all accounts decent public servant, touted by some as ???first female president??? material, had miraculously survived ??? so far ??? a brutal assassination attempt in which a bullet ripped through her head during a shooting rampage Saturday that left a trail of dead and wounded, and shattered even further America???s shaky vision of itself.
Yet the doctor???s simple summary seemed apt ??? because that is what the rest of her countrymen ??? and indeed people around the world ??? were doing as well: communicating with one another, in an agonized attempt to fit guns and vitriol, private mental instability and public rage ??? oh, and don???t forget random senselessness ??? into a workable thesis.
By noon Monday, CNN reported that more than two million Facebook users were hashing it out over the meaning of Tucson, saying they felt ???sad??? and that maybe this tragedy would finally get people to understand that ???words matter.???
This one got to us. Political assassination attempts are destabilizing because it is democracy itself that is being attacked. And when the fatalities include, among others, an adorable nine-year-old girl on the cusp of political awareness and a valiant senior who lovingly saved his wife???s life by lying on top of her, it only heightens our disgust and sorrow, our deep frustration and our desire to pin the blame, as fast as we can, on just one thing. And even our shame. It just shouldn???t be like this.
All mass shootings today involve an almost ritualistic debriefing: wonderment that the alleged perpetrator, in this case a 22-year-old kid, armed with a Glock 9 reloadable gun, had been obviously disturbed for a while but that no one ??? not his parents, not his school ??? had successfully addressed his condition. Anger from the left and denial from the right that a crime like this is still ??? and always ??? about America???s gun problem. (With the added irony that the intended victim, a so-called Blue Dog Democrat, was on record opposing gun control.)
And a growing conviction that all the vicious name calling and heightened hatefulness that is now business as usual in American political life, encouraged by even mainstream media, has to have been a factor.
Of course it was. Even if, or maybe especially if, you are mentally disturbed, why wouldn???t such open-season slagging, such vehement insistence that one political party or another is not just wrong in its intentions but destroying the very fabric of civilization, spur you on to commit mayhem? Tucson didn???t happen in a vacuum.
There clearly won???t be one simple explanation for this tragedy. But that doesn???t mean that all these complex issues shouldn???t be on the table and held up to harsh scrutiny, especially the ???don???t retreat, reload??? vile political rhetoric of the past few years. Sarah Palin???s crosshairs strategy shouldn???t be exempt.
There are other ways to get your points across. Words do matter.
And there were some powerful words out there, like New York Times token conservative Ross Douthat observation that violence in American politics ???tends to bubble up from a world that???s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue ??? a murky landscape where world views get cobbled together from a host of baroque conspiracy theories, and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast.???
And more good words from one of his liberal colleagues, Gail Collins, who recounted in her column that at a 2009 ???congress on your corner??? gathering, hosted by Ms. Giffords, one protester got so worked up that ???the pistol he was carrying under his armpit fell out of his holster.???
Ms. Giffords, a ???spunky Western girl??? according to Ms. Collins, apparently brushed this incident off, and astonishingly the man was never detained. Since then, gun control laws in Arizona have gotten even more relaxed.
I also like the words of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, now being excoriated, but who obviously adored Gabrielle Giffords, calling her a ???beautiful person,??? but who bravely said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting that ???the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is beginning to be outrageous.???
Ms. Giffords???s good friend, the Democratic Congresswoman from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, told CNN Monday that if anyone was going to survive a bullet through the head, it was her feisty friend Gabby.
I look forward to more optimistic briefings from Ms. Giffords's doctors, and I hope she not only survives but thrives. In true Hollywood fashion, I even imagine the happiest of outcomes, and hope she runs for president one day.
But I pity her for the unspeakable sorrow she will bear for the rest of her life and the question that will haunt her and everyone else: Could this have been prevented? Sadly, I think we already know the answer to that.
We are a 90 bed facility, and as soon as someone leaves, someone comes in...
LaserWolf said:
The_Hook_Up said:
As someone who works in a residential mental health facility, I have seen the evidence of how health insurance companies fuck up many people's treatment. Most insurance companies will only certify someone for one month of treatment. Only if a patient seems to be getting worse will an insurance company ok further tratment. If a patient shows any improvement utilization review has to jump through hoops to prove that the patient still needs further treatment. Health insurance companies and mental health treatment are not a good combo...basically insurance plans don't want to pay for it...so what are people supposed to do? No one is "cured" in 30 days...
Do you typically have enough open beds to accommodate the need?
Sounds like you might given the fact that insurance co. are kicking people out after 30 days.
I suppose there's a remake of Taxi Driver in the works where Travis Bickle walks into a 24 hour mental health treatment facility and they give him help immediately despite the fact that he has no health insurance. And then he lives happily ever after and no one gets shot.
I think Greg Kinnear should play Bickle. He just seems like a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.
I bet Palin didn't even know the historical and racist connotations of the term "blood libel" until she checked her Tweets this morning. Using a pejorative term implying that Jews murder children in the same speech in which she offers her condolences to the family of a slain child and a Congresswoman who happens to be Jewish was a calculated move on the part of her team. Her writers are exploiting the fact that she probably won't Google certain terms and phrases before she's asked to say them, but a marketing strategy edging on cluelessness seems to be working thus far. Though her team doesn't want fingers pointed at them, they'll take the spotlight if it shines on them.
I'd confidently bet Palin just thought "blood libel" means "really, really, really bad libel" (or, to paraphrase Bender, "the worst kind of libel--the kind about me!"). But I wouldn't be surprised if her speechwriter know what it means and deployed it purposely--remember that in their view, conservatives in general and Sarah Palin in particular are always the victims of something.
Also, Palin is a freak who has compared herself to Queen Esther in the past. Though again, who knows if that was her idea or if one of her advisers came up with that one, too.
Also, Palin is a freak who has compared herself to Queen Esther in the past. Though again, who knows if that was her idea or if one of her advisers came up with that one, too.
She likely meant the character on Sanford & Son.
While our country's mindset should be mourning victims, hoping the best for the survivors and addressing the reasons this happened, it is instead focused on attacking and defending the one Sara Palin.
There are not enough beds or mental health care facilities to deal with THAT insanity.
One of the things I learned when dealing with my friend/partners illness was that you can't force an adult to get mental health unless they commit a crime.
One of the many "freedoms" that we have here in America.
Also, Palin is a freak who has compared herself to Queen Esther in the past. Though again, who knows if that was her idea or if one of her advisers came up with that one, too.
She likely meant the character on Sanford & Son.
While our country's mindset should be mourning victims, hoping the best for the survivors and addressing the reasons this happened, it is instead focused on attacking and defending the one Sara Palin.
There are not enough beds or mental health care facilities to deal with THAT insanity.
I hope you're including yourself there.
The notion that everyone should be mourning 24/7 and not discussing or considering anything else is just code for "I don't like this discussion." Yet you've been taking part in it throughout.
This is true. A hunter generaly won't even touch the trigger until he or she is ready to shoot. I watched her show for maybe 5 minutes a couple of weeks ago, and her finger never left the trigger; even while shooting (no pun intended) an interview segment.
Favorite quote from that article:
"From there, numerous bungles along the way to finally downing the caribou show a hunting tourist who, at worst, appears to pose a genuine danger to fellow outdoorsmen."
Comments
No, you go to a mental health care facility and say that my son has been kicked out of college due to severe mental disturbance, can't hold even the simplest job, has no lasting friendships and has acted strangely for years now and we think he needs help.
They might even have a counter.
That first Wal-Mart store is denying this. They say he wasn't denied, he just left on his own before completing the transaction.
Maybe they don't want potential customers to be discouraged from going there.
And then they ask if your son is a minor.
Yeah, easy as buying a BK double. Or a Glock.
You can get treatment without being committed.
And my initial point was that there were no obstacles for him to get treatment other than himself or his parents not wanting to.
I worked at a Wal-Mart in high school in the late 80s, and for a while, I worked in Sporting Goods, which means that I sold handguns and rifles. I distinctly recall that potential customers had to fill out a form before they could buy a gun and that one of the questions was, "Have you ever been adjudicated mentally defective?" One woman paused upon reading that question and asked me if she could still buy the gun if she answered "yes." I told her that she could not, then she got embarrassed, excused herself, and left. I've always appreciated her honesty, but I also understand that she was most likely the exception.
I'm not sure what Wal-Mart's policy is these days, but I can tell you for a fact that it was frighteningly easy to buy handguns there back in the day.
I'm just saying that it supposes a lot to imagine someone like Loughner seeking out help for himself.
It is not easy for a parent or friend to get someone else help once they're of legal age. In this case, the parents would've needed to go before a judge as I understand it. It's not a sure thing.
The ONE easy thing that can prevent this kind of tragedy, as crazy as anyone wants to be, is to not be able to buy a gun easily.
It's doubtful that Loughner would've ever walked himself into treatment. Everybody worried he would get a gun. The "gun rights vs mental health care" argument is a false equivalency.
Do you typically have enough open beds to accommodate the need?
Sounds like you might given the fact that insurance co. are kicking people out after 30 days.
I'd confidently bet Palin just thought "blood libel" means "really, really, really bad libel" (or, to paraphrase Bender, "the worst kind of libel--the kind about me!"). But I wouldn't be surprised if her speechwriter know what it means and deployed it purposely--remember that in their view, conservatives in general and Sarah Palin in particular are always the victims of something.
On Monday, when a team of Tucson doctors held a press conference to delicately describe the condition of Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords???s traumatized brain, one of them said an interesting thing.
Concentrating as doctors do, not on the body politic but on the body before him, he described how the wounded congresswoman was responding to simple commands, and said he found it very hopeful that the ???centres of her brain are communicating with one another.???
Ms. Giffords, a glowingly ambitious and by all accounts decent public servant, touted by some as ???first female president??? material, had miraculously survived ??? so far ??? a brutal assassination attempt in which a bullet ripped through her head during a shooting rampage Saturday that left a trail of dead and wounded, and shattered even further America???s shaky vision of itself.
Yet the doctor???s simple summary seemed apt ??? because that is what the rest of her countrymen ??? and indeed people around the world ??? were doing as well: communicating with one another, in an agonized attempt to fit guns and vitriol, private mental instability and public rage ??? oh, and don???t forget random senselessness ??? into a workable thesis.
By noon Monday, CNN reported that more than two million Facebook users were hashing it out over the meaning of Tucson, saying they felt ???sad??? and that maybe this tragedy would finally get people to understand that ???words matter.???
This one got to us. Political assassination attempts are destabilizing because it is democracy itself that is being attacked. And when the fatalities include, among others, an adorable nine-year-old girl on the cusp of political awareness and a valiant senior who lovingly saved his wife???s life by lying on top of her, it only heightens our disgust and sorrow, our deep frustration and our desire to pin the blame, as fast as we can, on just one thing. And even our shame. It just shouldn???t be like this.
All mass shootings today involve an almost ritualistic debriefing: wonderment that the alleged perpetrator, in this case a 22-year-old kid, armed with a Glock 9 reloadable gun, had been obviously disturbed for a while but that no one ??? not his parents, not his school ??? had successfully addressed his condition. Anger from the left and denial from the right that a crime like this is still ??? and always ??? about America???s gun problem. (With the added irony that the intended victim, a so-called Blue Dog Democrat, was on record opposing gun control.)
And a growing conviction that all the vicious name calling and heightened hatefulness that is now business as usual in American political life, encouraged by even mainstream media, has to have been a factor.
Of course it was. Even if, or maybe especially if, you are mentally disturbed, why wouldn???t such open-season slagging, such vehement insistence that one political party or another is not just wrong in its intentions but destroying the very fabric of civilization, spur you on to commit mayhem? Tucson didn???t happen in a vacuum.
There clearly won???t be one simple explanation for this tragedy. But that doesn???t mean that all these complex issues shouldn???t be on the table and held up to harsh scrutiny, especially the ???don???t retreat, reload??? vile political rhetoric of the past few years. Sarah Palin???s crosshairs strategy shouldn???t be exempt.
There are other ways to get your points across. Words do matter.
And there were some powerful words out there, like New York Times token conservative Ross Douthat observation that violence in American politics ???tends to bubble up from a world that???s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue ??? a murky landscape where world views get cobbled together from a host of baroque conspiracy theories, and where the line between ideological extremism and mental illness gets blurry fast.???
And more good words from one of his liberal colleagues, Gail Collins, who recounted in her column that at a 2009 ???congress on your corner??? gathering, hosted by Ms. Giffords, one protester got so worked up that ???the pistol he was carrying under his armpit fell out of his holster.???
Ms. Giffords, a ???spunky Western girl??? according to Ms. Collins, apparently brushed this incident off, and astonishingly the man was never detained. Since then, gun control laws in Arizona have gotten even more relaxed.
I also like the words of Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, now being excoriated, but who obviously adored Gabrielle Giffords, calling her a ???beautiful person,??? but who bravely said in the immediate aftermath of the shooting that ???the anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is beginning to be outrageous.???
Ms. Giffords???s good friend, the Democratic Congresswoman from Florida, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, told CNN Monday that if anyone was going to survive a bullet through the head, it was her feisty friend Gabby.
I look forward to more optimistic briefings from Ms. Giffords's doctors, and I hope she not only survives but thrives. In true Hollywood fashion, I even imagine the happiest of outcomes, and hope she runs for president one day.
But I pity her for the unspeakable sorrow she will bear for the rest of her life and the question that will haunt her and everyone else: Could this have been prevented? Sadly, I think we already know the answer to that.
I think Greg Kinnear should play Bickle. He just seems like a happy-go-lucky kind of guy.
Also, Palin is a freak who has compared herself to Queen Esther in the past. Though again, who knows if that was her idea or if one of her advisers came up with that one, too.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_the_United_States_(by_state)#Arizona
And very liberal commitment laws.
But, very few facilities where you can get inpatient treatment.
http://www.treatmentadvocacycenter.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=91&Itemid=133
She likely meant the character on Sanford & Son.
While our country's mindset should be mourning victims, hoping the best for the survivors and addressing the reasons this happened, it is instead focused on attacking and defending the one Sara Palin.
There are not enough beds or mental health care facilities to deal with THAT insanity.
when did this phrase enter the lexicon?
One of the things I learned when dealing with my friend/partners illness was that you can't force an adult to get mental health unless they commit a crime.
One of the many "freedoms" that we have here in America.
lexicon?
everyday language.
I think I learned the phrase in college? I don't know, seems O/T
O/T?
Off Topic
It's a term used exclusively by right wing-nuts so that they don't have to address any real facts or suitable analogies.
really? i've really only heard it used by those on the ideological left. is this just a fancy, new-fangled, loaded way of saying "equivocation'?
I hope you're including yourself there.
The notion that everyone should be mourning 24/7 and not discussing or considering anything else is just code for "I don't like this discussion." Yet you've been taking part in it throughout.
This is true. A hunter generaly won't even touch the trigger until he or she is ready to shoot. I watched her show for maybe 5 minutes a couple of weeks ago, and her finger never left the trigger; even while shooting (no pun intended) an interview segment.
Favorite quote from that article:
"From there, numerous bungles along the way to finally downing the caribou show a hunting tourist who, at worst, appears to pose a genuine danger to fellow outdoorsmen."
"you equivocatin' like a motherfucker right now!"
No. They have nothing to do with each other.
Maybe this will help people with a fear of big fancy hi-falutin' words:
http://waxbanks.typepad.com/blog/2005/11/generalized_def.html