Oddbean new post about login | logout This chart is kind of shocking actually. A society completely flipped the mechanism for how it deals with people who are problematic for themselves and others. https://m.primal.net/Lazc.jpg
Looks like mental institutions got defunded well before prisons took off.
Over here in this other reply, Misty's parents understood the graph right at the beginning nostr:note1t74latflaqq92kugp7dl5vv0x4wnzxt5ujlwyxxpp8ap4k3xe2wq52esv7
Parents was wrong word my bad
Not sure what to make of it, but in the mid 70s it seems the sum of both was just half the number before and after (~300 vs. ~600)
I noticed the same thing. It would be interesting to see if there was an increase in civil disturbances during the 70s.
WTF happened in 1971? 🤔 https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ nostr:nevent1qqsfant66c6e0k2tpj43gjhaqamrens9cpvpk69ulhgfudhr2dfag2gpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsyg82krn4d5etsz7dge8nmpztspqrqvr45yl2hs6enfmzexk84wglfupsgqqqqqqseexxmh
nostr:nevent1qqs959c3q6qfn4hrt857c60ne0e0jxqcguu097e032gz2y8pl7dkd2cpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hsygywce28pshyzx3xd4wmkprr96tgdvqv6c3u8fef6vwcrw7hn9as6ypsgqqqqqqsugjcsg
I know most of whom I consider real Bitcoiners are right leaning or libertarian (extend scope of these as you like) and as such I’d assume they tend to prefer prisons over mental hospitals… However on this one they’d be wrong. It matters how a society treats their weakest. If you truly can’t control your behaviour and emotions you deserve help. This is not and should not be a „human right“ granted by governments enabled through force. Instead it should be a gift we grant ourselves as societies. The gift of dignity and a way out of dark places for everyone because we’re human.
How do you feel about this? https://nostrcheck.me/media/2aadfb8ac7d43aca6d164ed99248147910048269601ff60d4463c4d5b3abfdcd/d7b3e7c9823ad202084ecd76c057e6d693fe1cde0d3b3ffa70ba8051454e487e.webp
Ambiguous. Why?
Asking questions of others helps me to understand them. 🫂
I consider this a smart strategy 🫂
It’s worked in every other war. Information war is my last one. Promised myself & others. Humanity is always worth fighting for … on every timeline. Truth is: highly dislike being online. Only here to create a better world. Hugs 🫂
Dosage makes the poison. True for being online too I guess. ⚖️
Old poems … but yes on the dosage Lifelong favorite story of mine Judged on looks The desire to be seen For all that I am Good and evil encompassing Read & repeated In multiple timelines Knew the moment I saw you That you’d be my ending - allowed you to reach out first Balancing the scales again (Undated) And Ayida Weddo Never malicious, but bites She allows ample time For her medicine to work Never giving more than She knows you can handle So slither away out of fear Rest & recovery pleaded All ways good, my lovelies I’m here when needed Salivating salvations - salve Oh my Waking heart Why did it take so long Ayida & Damballa Slithering as one mind & dream Together again We must lead August 8, 2024
Why looking this chart my thoughts is "WTF happen in 1971"... Doesn't make sense, but still.
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/gold-convertibility-ends Among other things. The American war in Vietnam was also raging, and Nixon's war on Poverty was going as well -- this last matter likely resulting in some specific legislation that saw the drastic shift. And as others have mentioned, the old lunatic asylums (as they were actually called) weren't exactly a place you'd want to end up either. Prison may suck, but they tend not to actually lobotomize you at least.
The prison thing is fucked up. But tbf many mental hospitals were shut down for grave mistreatment, so called “state homes” particularly for folks with severe disabilities My first nonprofit gig was working with folks affected by these state homes. Horrific
In the 70s in Italy a psychiatrist held a popular campaign to close all mental hospitals and help people with mental illness in their “return” - reinserimento - into society. Catholics and communists were both happy to sign a law closing mental institutions. A law of civilization, they were saying.
I'll never forget my grandmother and my mother in the living room watching Ronald Regan. "They're defunding the mental institutions..." "Yep. It won't be right away, but in about 30 years, you're gonna see crazy people roaming the streets in droves. It won't be safe to go out any more." I had no real idea what they were talking about, but I remember it was a big deal, and now here we are, seeing the impacts of that.
Homeless people are the scourge of modern cities. Luckily I'm now in Wyoming where there are no homeless people. I have always maintained that I would be willing to pay to get homeless people tf out of my city me. But the modern city seems to want to have you pay for the privilege of having homeless people roaming all over the place. I just want a facility outside of town that is free and voluntary to enter and exit(though transportation out isn't free). Within this facility nothing is required of you(besides reasonable behavior), but you can opt into doing tasks around the shelter to make a little money and improve your position. Thise who are truly in need of help would quickly work their way out and those who are mentally disabled or useless would have a place to be.
Well when you privatize prisons and they have a corporate bottom line you’ll need customers to keep the shareholders happy.
There’s more money to be made in the private prison industry. It’s very simple.
No wonder the 70's were wild nostr:nevent1qqsfant66c6e0k2tpj43gjhaqamrens9cpvpk69ulhgfudhr2dfag2gprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuendwsh8w6t69e3xj730qgsw4v882mfjhq9u63j08kzyhqzqxqc8tgf740p4nxnk9jdv02u37ncrqsqqqqqpl20gla
reminds me of the graphs for covid and flu... or long covid and chronic fatigue syndrome
I never understood prison as a deterrent. As a place to put dangerous people, sure... but free room and board in exchange for limited freedom? At some point the economic reality is it makes sense to cause some trouble just to get fed and out of the cold. I realize the thread is about mental health. The problem with mental hospitals is they were abused. Husbands would commit their wives as being "histerical" and put them on lithium or other psychoactive drugs. Getting rid of them completely was an obvious mistake. There are many unstable and untreated people with no where to go so they just "mill about" in urban areas, often shouting nonsense and acting paranoid. It is quite unsettling. Especially if you have children that don't understand what's happening. Once beautiful and safe cities are overrun with the drug addicted or insane.
Reminds me the film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest". Back then, mental hospitals were actually prisons, too.
They still are. Just fewer people in them and different methods of torture now.
If I od’d as an adult, and not a minor, I would’ve been sent to prison for possessing controlled substance instead of being sent to inpatient & rehab. I think about it all the time, no way I would’ve gotten clean.
That's a scary thought, where would nostr be then
Yes. But. The chart doesn’t really capture the complexity of the overall problem - there's a lot of mental illness that's not hospitalized. In reality, many (or most) of us will experience cognitive decline if we are fortunate enough to live long lives. Toward the end, serious mental decline - often lasting 1-6 months, is more than common, but it isn’t factored into this chart or treated in the same way, as it is categorically differentiated from 'mental illness'. But it is. And it's hospitalized, but not 'categorized' as such. The brain is annoyingly just another organ (with 'magic properties', yes, but is still limited to our physics), just like the heart or liver, subject to disease, inflammation, and aging. Yet we often overlook this because our subjective experience of reality feels so distinct. But time is the most finite resource any of us has. Subjectively speaking (subjective to our lifespan) it's even more finite than Bitcoin. So the only thing more 'hard' than hard money is hard time. See what I did there - circled back to the chart. :]
and/or, not and - I'm a problem for others because others are a problem for me I'd never be locked up for being a problem for myself, except when suicidal - it's a war between me and everyone else, they don't care to protect me from myself unless I threaten to make them grieve a death
I recall in the early 70s, the rise of psycho-active drugs like thorazine, enabled the hospitals to empty out the mentally ill. It was the beginning of widespread homelessness and crime as these folks weren’t really healthy. Sad. The thorazine took the edge off the more violent patients.
I could see this happening thirty years ago following government cuts in mental health institutions, closing down facilities, building more prisons My father was a prison officer for thirty years but I didn’t follow his footsteps 😎 instead choosing adventure instead
I question how much this says about society. Mental hospitals were in many ways even worse than prisons, administering all sorts of torturous, pseudoscientific psychiatric practices that had long-term consequences for many. A search for "insulin shock therapy" provides a glimpse into this very dark world.
I think it may not be quite so two dimensional though, given that "mental hospital" is all but euphemistic for what those old asylums were like compared with modern psychiatric wards. Actually addressing care is a lot more expensive than just locking people away. That said, shifting from asylums for all to care for a select few while the rest are thrown into prisons with hardened criminals and patting ourselves on the back for the progress of the hospitals is hardly justified, even if it does make for good political soundbites and a facade of progress. There's also the matter of these populations not necessarily being the same populations. Many who'd have been in asylums in the past now live their lives in a drugged up pharmaceutical haze, while meanwhile, other antecedents for criminal activity have stepped up thanks to, among other things, the debasement of currency lowering living standards and creating an impetus to find less legal ways to keep one's head and family above water. The same debasement that may well have funded the psychiatric research in the first place that led to drugs that allowed the asylums to be emptied.
That is such a sad graph, Lyn. Thinking of all the individuals, life circumstances, support workers and families that are attached to each one of those “numbers”. https://media.tenor.com/oaZohXDdgcoAAAAC/greys-anatomy-jules-millin.gif
Destruction of societal compassion in one graph.
Not sure I'd call the lunatic asylums particularly compassionate. Prisons lock you up. Asylums actually lobotomized people. Never mind the sort of human experimentation they did. Radioactive oatmeal being one phenomenon that comes to mind from a nearby institution. Eugenics was often so widely embraced because compared to these institutions IT was seen as the more compassionate approach.
I'd definitely agree. History of asylums is filled with the most heinous transgressions of human rights. I think I was reflecting (probably too simplistically) on the institutional mandates... To care for (even though that was poorly or inhumanely executed) vs To punish. But I definitely take your point
1955: The number of mentally ill patients in public psychiatric hospitals peaks at 560,000. 1962: The publication of Ken Kesey’s novel “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” further critiques the institutionalized mental healthcare system. 1963: The Community Mental Health Act provides federal funding for community-based care and treatment facilities. 1965: Medicaid excludes coverage for people in “institutions for mental diseases,” incentivizing states to move patients out of state mental hospitals and into nursing homes and general hospitals. 1967: California passes the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, making involuntary hospitalization more difficult and contributing to the decline of institutionalized care. https://mentalhealthcop.wordpress.com/2022/02/03/the-penrose-hypothesis/
in the '80s the supreme Court said you can't hold people against their will unless they've committed a crime and crazy people had typically committed no crime so they shut down the nut houses and let them all loose and now they live in the forests all through my beloved City of Austin Texas the city greenbelts are full of needles and shopping carts everybody blamed Ronald Reagan at the time but really it was the supreme Court and in fact it was a liberal Justice that was the swing vote on the supreme Court that caused this problem the case that started the problem was that some man had put his wife and stepchildren in The nut House on trumped up evidence that they couldn't fight because they didn't seem credible after they'd been in the asylum for a while apparently this was a common way to get rid of an annoying wife and her annoying kids
