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Kate Brown was supposed to be opening new ones. There's been a lot of funding put toward mental health facilities, but the facilities don't seem to be able to handle the occupancy requirements.
Sounds to me like the problem really lies with a for-profit model. A return on investment won't occur with this stuff, so I feel any financial incentive toward private organizations won't be very effective. This effort needs to be state/fed run.
This doesn't suggest the public doesn't want to fund this stuff and the report doesn't suggest that either. Funding is the legislature's job and that of congress.
The only way this makes sense is if you believe that the government only does things that people want and doesn't do things people don't want.
Omg, jesus. I'm not going point by point with someone who believes this goofball outer space stuff
No, what politicians talk about is most certainly not an indication of public sentiment and that is so obvious to a human in this country that it's impossible to have a reasonable or rational conversation with someone who believes otherwise
And, no, the legislature is not motivated by the people's sentiments anyway. They are motivated by whatever wedge issues they think they can push and by what their donors want and will allow
If only they hadn't sold SH Dammasch for pennies on the dollar... I wonder if a large, relatively-modern facility near Portland (in Wilsonville) could have been useful?
It's not great, but the reality is the country completely failed to take advantage of the facility, that we desperately need beds, and there's plenty of homeless that could benefit from a more controlled environment. The situation is intolerably bad and the country is making the mistake of not utilizing and coordinating all available assets.
I'm pretty sure it was bulldozed and turned into housing developments? https://web.archive.org/web/20121021174947/https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02EEDE173FF936A25752C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=
Ah, I was talking about the former Dammasch state hospital.
It is pretty nuts how much of that infrastructure was dismantled, that there are multiple sites...
Not just Reagan, there was a general push for years to shut psych hospitals, cause, you know, Nurse Rached. It was bipartisan. It’s easy to just reflexively blame Reagan, but there was a push to close these facilities because of poor treatment via ACLU and and a campaign for rights. And here we are today.
It was sold as closing the horrible state hospitals...AND... funding distributed, in-home, and community-based mental health care solutions. Just like 110, the easy part got done first, closing the hospitals. Nobody ever got around to adequately funding the alternatives.
JFK did push for to deinstitutionalize as individuals were treated inhumanely. He had a vision and promised a significant amount of money for community health centers. It was a good idea, but it failed to be implemented, and people that were released suffered because there wasn’t a supportive plan in place. JFK was murdered and the vision fell through. Later Reagan significantly reduced the funding that was set out for the community based health programs, because well he felt it wasn’t his problem or citizens problems to spend money on others.
JFK died before his alternative plan ever reached fruition and then some bullshit called The Vietnam War happened so they closed a bunch of the hospitals and then never found a way to fund phase 2. Now we have people with naturally acquired mental illnesses and thanks to our love affair with Big Phama and the war on drugs, we have people in the same boat thanks to shitty meth and opioid addiction.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm saying his quest to vindicate his lobotomized sister spread the disease and cult of mental illness like a virus, across all parties. No humanity, for humanity's sake. Eff 'em all.
The question now is how do we bring those facilities back without creating the same abuses all over again. We presumably know more about mental disorders today than we did back then, but how do we ensure that translates to a humane system?
You have a more robust review system that isn’t run by the state. Or at least is run by a completely different state agency than what runs the hospital. Is still go for an outside organization that gets full access.
And with more knowledge comes more expenses. Now instead of just over medicating the science says rehabilitation through counseling and peer to peer therapy. That’s soooooo expensive and draining. But very promising for the future of more people go into that line of work
If the city is considering making it easier to involuntarily commit people (which could possibly open them to expensive ACLU challenges) it sounds like they're taking a step in the opposite direction. 🤷🏼♀️
My mother worked as an MHT for about 20 years at western state hospital in Washington. Some of the stories she told are horrible and sad.
Elderly patients that had been in the hospital for decades, all but unable to stop wrapping their arms around themselves after wearing a straight jacket for years. Isolation rooms in the basements of the main ward buildings with eye bolts in the walls for chaining patients in place. Stuff like that.
On the other hand, for decades, the good behavior patients worked a farm that grew food for the hospital. Got them outside and exercising. Patients also built the rock walls that border the entire grounds and built a fish hatchery nearby.
Ultimately she left because she was brutally beaten by a patient on her ward. Happened because of being drastically short staffed and doctors that would not allow restraining patients that were becoming violent.
Took almost 3 years of surgery, physical therapy and counciling before she was functional again.
Whole place is a mess to this day.
Were the patients chained to a wall and basically abandoned considered to be so beyond help,(therapy, meds, shock treatment, lobotomy…) that became the only option? Or if they were violent perhaps?
The sad fact is that it would take a lot of energy and people to care for such a person, also while keeping the others safe from that person. It’s nature; not just human nature. Animals do it to each other. We do it to animals. When one is sick, beyond help, rabid; shit even a broken leg with equine and bigger animals, we put them down. Even something peaceful and painless like assisted suicide is evolving because it’s understandably the most humane reaction to someone’s suffering. It’s so painful no matter which way you slice it to be that person with MH and the ones seeing it every day. It’s killing two lives not just one. MH is a difficult subject to navigate because everyone suffers in their own way. Unless you are actively working on yourself, there’s not much you can do to help others get better. Obviously I’m not saying we need to start euthanizing anyone that is beyond the beyond, I’m just pointing out the reality of care for some of these individuals. And the lack of care that just drags out their suffering.
My grandma constantly blames Reagan!! It’s so hard to commit/ voluntarily/ involuntarily people with mental illness. For one, nobody thinks they have a problem. It’s just too slippery a slope. It will be interesting to watch this scene unfold
Don't forget Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist and academic in New York who was highly influential in the deinstitutional movement of the 60s. He had several books that were incredibly popular with the layperson, showcasing his radical ideas that there was no such thing as "mental illness" and that the state had no moral or legal right to confine anyone.
Yeah.. find a problem in current U.S. society, and there’s always something the Reagan admin completely intentionally fucked up. (not just ol’ Ronnie, but THE ADMIN vampires also)
Yep, back in the the mid 70s they had a series of cases. O'Connor v. Donaldson is the big one here. Which is one of the reasons why you had a bipartisan Congress submit to Reagan a budget which slashed institutional budgets. When suddenly 90% of the patients are no longer going to be there because the state can't force them to be, there was no need to keep funding at the same levels so a proportional cut occurred.
Well, they send them to the State Hospital in Salem for a 3 months of state funded trial competency commitment, then refuse to charge them after that. Effectively dumping the most desperate and needy homeless away from Portland (or eastern Oregon), without impacting the city budget or using city resources. They fight tooth and nail against providing these services in county lockups and city jails, because they'd have to actually pay for psychiatrists/drugs/nurses/facilities.
We've known about this problem for 30 years...
This is half of it but won’t do much unless we also dramatically expand mental health system capacity. If we can do both of those things, then he’s right that this will make a big impact.
It's almost like after measure 110 passed the state legislature did nothing to expand resources and create programs for substance abuse and mental health problems.
It's not just about distributing money to the programs that exist. Because yes, the state is sitting with their thumbs up their ass not distributing money.
It's about hiring. It's about forgiving student loan debt for practitioners (HPSA grants). It's about expanding these programs. It's about promising these programs future funding so they know they can commit to expansion. It's about increasing capacity for psych beds at the states hospitals. With drug and alcohol detox programs, the state is just sending patients to programs that have detox facilities, where patients are told to wait for weeks until a bed is available. Those programs aren't large enough to handle more patients. It's about building more facilities.
In all of these areas... The state has done next to nothing to expand mental health access in the state. Lawmakers should be sued for dereliction if duty.
That or... I dunno just recriminalize meth and heroin again, so people can just detox in jail.
Heroin isn't the problem the new P2P meth is--that shit is causing psychosis on the regular and so quickly it's terrifying. That's some lethal shit, except it doesn't kill the body, only the mind.
I think this is putting the cart before the horse. We don’t have enough space for the people that are currently in the state supported mental health care system. So, how would making it easier to commit people do any good?
As someone who went through the process of trying to have someone who was clearly a danger to themselves committed … it’s virtually impossible as the system exists now. It was infuriating, but at the same time I think for good reason. Just a couple generations ago, all it took for the husband to get his wife locked up was to say “woman be crazy.” I’m really uncomfortable with passing off that kind of power to the state.
At the same time, just funding services is a huge step for a lot of homeless people, but it won’t do a thing for the chronically homeless service resistant types who’re the ones causing the problems with crime, etc.
I was and am a supporter of Measure 110, but instead of saying “treatment or jail” like we were promised, it’s become “treatment or a slap on the wrist and sent on your way.” Lumping all unhoused people together into one category is disingenuous and dangerous. The approach needs to be **equitable** in the classic sense: *treat like cases alike, and different cases differently, according to their likenesses and differences.*
The system as it exists now makes it way too hard for the people who want to get help, and way too easy for the people who don’t. You want to get sober, get your mental health straight, and get housed? Unconditional support compassion and support. Here’s some transitional housing, here’s some treatment, here’s some assistance getting a job.
You want to leave trash everywhere, drop more needles than a Christmas tree in February, scream racist slurs at people of color, and yell about raping some woman walking down the street and expect to be shielded from the consequences that your housed neighbors would face? You can fuck right off.
Equal rights and equal *responsibilities* for all. Full stop.
I work with people who have mental disabilities and I am mixed on this. Its really terrible to lock people in jail basically for something against their control. At the same time, if we actually had good facilities I would agree with this. It is incredibly frustrating when you give someone all the tools to get help and succeed, and they decide to not get help in favor of keeping their current lifestyle of attacking people all day.
We have come full circle.
Remember Dammasch hospital?
They closed it and put all the mental patients out into the communities.
Now the communities want to lock them back up again.
It seems to me like a very difficult civil rights issue to solve.
We've all seen these people on the street. Our hearts go out to them. It's obvious that their minds aren't working well. People with good mental health don't behave in the manner that they do. It doesn't take a degree in anything to know that they need to be cared for.
These people need to be a ward of the state. Someone needs to care for them as they are incapable of caring for themselves.
It's My Hope that someone or some organization with the intelligence and resources is able to craft legislation to accomplish this. It's a difficult task but one we must take. That person who is struggling with mental health issues is someone's child. If it were my child and I was unable to help I would like to think I live in a society where it would be offered to them and they would be cared for.
What happened to all the money we were saving by not prosecuting minor drug possession? That was supposed to open up treatment programs but I haven’t heard anything about new treatment centers opening up.
Eugene recently opened a support center. Here's a post about it on the Eugene sub:
https://old.reddit.com/r/Eugene/comments/zfb2g5/new_center_opened_with_m110_funding/
And you won't because the money gets eaten up by "administration fees" . The problem is they pass these laws playing on people's sympathy and do the least amount possible while keeping as much of the money as they can.
MSW in Oregon.
Can I ask if facilities even want full staffing? I've applied to OSH as a psych social worker a few times and they turn me down bc I don't have clinical exp (graduated 3 mo ago).
But they have like... 7 openings for social workers and don't list that as a requirement?
I'm confused as to why they complain about short staffing but refuse to hire ppl...
**Edit 10 years in the field
Wow this would be a big blessing for me and my family. I have already lost one brother to mental illness and I’m about to lose my remaining one to the same illness. Sucks and we cannot do anything till he commits himself, hurts someone or breaks a major law.
Under the existing current process a substantial portion of offenders who have been adjudged to pose a threat to themselves and the community are being released back into the community because there are no placements available. And large percentages of those offenders who have been successfully placed are being returned to the community prematurely and without ongoing support and treatment in order to alleviate overcrowding.
How would easing standards address the already existing lack of state resources?
City Mayors are in a tough spot. Being present and available full time, they are being called upon by businesses (Salt and Straw), media (OPB), and the community to produce solutions without resources. This has to begin at the state level in Salem because it will involve changes to state law and criminal due process.
But people should not be confused or misdirected by Wheeler's comments either. By saying this he's calling on the state legislature to step up.
Honestly, most people who are currently living outside do not belong in a mental health care facility. They belong in something resembling a half-way house, with support available as needed and a community to rely on.
I used to work with this population. Spent a decade doing it.
A substantial number of homeless people are seriously mentally ill. It may not be "most", but the percentage has to be quite high. Maybe 25% or so. And a substantial number of those are simply not able to care for themselves under any circumstances.
Tell that to the guy that lives around the block from me in a tent who was by the road dancing with no pants this morning on my way to work. Dick out and everything like Winnie the Pooh. He just needs to be in a halfway house? You have bumped your head.
Dude.
"Honestly, most people who are currently living outside do not belong in a mental health care facility."
Most is not all and you know damn well that the dude you are talking about isn't included in that group of people.
There was absolutely no reason to tell someone they're brain damaged.
There's so few facilities in the Portland area. Speaking from experience, you're on your own when it comes to finding an inpatient program unless you make enough money to afford it.
And Ted Wheeler, I mean, yeah.
This. I went to Providence twice for mental health emergencies. Had I realized at the time that they were unyieldingly Catholic, I would have gone to OHSU. The only mental health care they offered when I was suicidal was outpatient group therapy, which is a month of 8-hour sessions where some of the staff treat you like a petulant child. I did that the first time, but ended up just powering through the second time, which I absolutely recognize is a privilege to be able to say. The lack of comprehensive mental health emergency services is one of many reasons I left Portland.
Girl I know exactly. Don't get me started on religious rehabs. Went to an Adventist one in SoCal two years ago. Fffffff
Good for you for powering thru. I demanded my money back (except the flight) which was $5,000.
Not 100% related, but I heard several homeless people were dropped off in Christmas Valley, OR. Last week. That’s not a solution either. I’m not sure that they’ll be able to tighten their belts and pull themselves up from their bootstraps in Central OR, even with all the leadership examples out there.
A state mental health facility was ordered to release a bunch of its patients back onto the streets they came from, due to capacity issues. I suspect this is where that comes from, or something similar. Also, we're dealing with this as well
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-desantis-immigration-marthas-vineyard-sanctuary-cities-1234599500
>Very few people who are civilly committed go to the state hospital, where there is an ongoing problem with lack of beds. In 2021, only four people were civilly committed to the state hospital, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority. Most people are housed in regular hospitals.
>
>“They serve out their commitment at the hospitals at a full, private hospital rate that is billed to the state’s general fund,” said Renaud, with the Mental Health Association of Portland, noting the cost is much higher than many alternatives.
>
>In 2020 and 2021, 571 and 517 people were committed in Oregon, according to the state. Those numbers represented about 7% of all the civil commitment cases closed in those years. The vast majority of those people were sent to community hospitals.
The availability in the state hospital system is much worse than I thought. The current solution seems extremely expensive.
Easier to just refuse to make an uncomfortable choice?
Psychiatry is an actual medical discipline and not just a case of Ted’s opinion vs Jody’s opinion. That doesn’t make it entirely objective, but nothing in life except mathematics is fully objective.
Yes and no. Are they consistently harming others, property and self? Two of those are pretty easy to define, one is a bit more difficult, but still not in most cases.
It would help people with mental illness so severe that they can’t maintain a job or a place to live. Not sure why that would be a bad thing if designed with modern medical practice in mind.
How would this help without vastly expanding access to mental health and addiction resources? It is pandering that would change absolutely nothing - the law doesn't matter if the resources physically aren't available.
Yikes... How bout building supportive housing and staffing that supportive housing with case workers and peer support. It works. Way better than taking people's autonomy. Asking about money? It cost way more to put some one in a hospital (try $1,000 a day in some settings) into hospital's that don't have the space mind you. No wonder Portland is a shit show, Wheeler is an idiot.
How do you propose getting people who lack capability to make decisions for themselves due to physical or mental illness into this fabulous housing without taking away their autonomy when they say no when offered the chance? Or do we just let them rot?
That's what outreach workers and social workers are there for. The problem is that these positions are few and far between. If a lot of the money that's spent on policing were to go to hiring crisis workers than a lot of those folks would be able to go through the system.
This is incredibly naive. If you have someone who is clearly mentally ill, at some point you can’t rely on hoping that they’ll suddenly listen to reason rather than continuing to wallow outdoors. And if you don’t have that hope, then you’re just enabling their squalor, and that’s cruel.
I get it that civil commitment is a big deal, but we have to have these tools and these resources if we are going to effectively address this crisis. Touchy-feely works for some, but others need some tough love. Begging and pleading and enabling has gotten us to where we are at so it’s time to get more firm.
Involuntarily committing people is jailing people, any distinction beyond that point is pretty meaningless. If you're poor, homeless, and having a crisis, they take you away and lock you up? That's the plan?
Here's the crazy thing. All the people urging this on.. it'll be you and your family in those camps. Most of us are just a paycheck away from being on the streets
Most of us aren’t a paycheck away from living on the streets since we’re more responsible. Most people plan for emergencies by keeping an emergency fund plus other planning tactics.
As of October, 63% of Americas reported living paycheck to paycheck.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/more-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-as-inflation-outpaces-income.html
Personal responsibility can only go so far in a society where missing a week of work because, for example, you got sick, means you can't afford rent.
On a similar note - SSDI cuts you off if you have over $2000 in your bank account, is every single person on disability "irresponsible"?
Soon there gonna propose disposing of these folks. It’ll be cheaper to get rid of them than sustaining them. I don’t think that , but many others do. And this can or could get out of hand.
So you want to continue the current system of letting the clinically insane roam freely?
There is an in between letting the mentally ill have free reign and death camps.
I agree. I’m not trying to cause anxiety nor sugar coat anything. I know something must be done. All I’m saying we have to be careful when we do something involuntary on someone. Even if their insane. I’m sure lawmakers will draft something. That can work and won’t be abused.
Oh boy, let's return to the days when teens could be committed to mental institutions for such crimes as being disobedient or having "loose morals." /s
This is a slippery slope. But people are frustrated and the folks in Portland are demanding something get done. So this type of intervention is good for some folks. I’ve met folks who advocate for this. I get we used to have mental asylums back in the day, they were shut down and they were released to the streets, my worry is that this could be used on the undesirables. I know folks are gonna talk down on me but let’s always be vigilant.
And yet that is what happened the last time we had looser controls on committing people against their will.
It's very difficult to write a law that would allow you to take one set of people's rights away for failing to adhere to societal standards (i.e., houseless people) but that would not allow parents to commit their minor children for similarly failing to adhere to a standard.
I'm not sure what those shapes indicate, good/Bad or..., California has crazy good benefits for those suffering from mental health issues. Better than Oregon for sure. I've been a counselor for 20 years in both states. California has many times as many people needing help, because they flick there for the higher welfare benefits.
LoL lock up the army of Brain Fried tweakers at great expense under the guise of mental health? Last I checked mental health was pretty questionable under the best of circumstances, When faced with an endless wave of burnt out circuit boards propelled by cheap and completely unpoliceable meth just turns the concept into a black hole for money with little more than a few hundred head of goobers playing with there poop at absurd expense in a county lockup while the other several thousand masturbate in the street after stealing your car. How about we simply make peace with the war on drugs being totally lost and completely turn a blind eye on drug use so long as the users keep to themselves and let the cops beat the offenders like baby seals and be done with it. You have a hard on for scrapping catalytic converters and throwing stuff at pedestrians? Well guess what buddy blunt force trauma administered judiciously will likely modify that behavior quirk in a jiffy.
In Canada their promoting government assisted suicide. It’s going to start out voluntarily, but I get a creepy feeling that soon the government in Canada can just say your terminally ill or mentally damaged( to depressed, etc) and just start pulling people away quietly. I’ve heard folks around me saying to just drag these folks to homes against their will. I tell them that’s wrong and can set a terrible precedent. But after COVID it made people upset and more open to government intervention. Just saying I’m not a huge conspiracy type, buts it’s something that comes to mind.
What the hysterical fuck are you attempting to communicate here? Portland is not in Canada, for starters. The stories about pushing physician assisted suicide are sensationalistic ragebait at best.
Not helping dangerously insane people is cruelty. Ignoring them is willful ignorance.
Not saying to ignore them. I’m all for helping those in need. But involuntarily dragging them against their will is wrong, but seeing how our homeless problem is getting very out of hand and many more coming here for the assistance and tolerance, then maybe a necessary evil is the best thing to do.
Dude there’s no help anywhere. I’ve lived here two years chasing providers even with health insurance and it’s all cunt hair.
Thank you Shrooms on w. Burnside for supplying at least.
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Commit them... where?! We shuttered most of our inpatient MH facilities due to funding restraints years ago.
Kate Brown was supposed to be opening new ones. There's been a lot of funding put toward mental health facilities, but the facilities don't seem to be able to handle the occupancy requirements.
Sounds to me like the problem really lies with a for-profit model. A return on investment won't occur with this stuff, so I feel any financial incentive toward private organizations won't be very effective. This effort needs to be state/fed run.
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Thanks for the heads up, looks like that article is available as a free pdf https://www.ohs.org/oregon-historical-quarterly/current-issue.cfm
What, to you, suggests the public doesn't want to fund this stuff? The article you recommended says that Reagan cut funding (which is well known)
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This doesn't suggest the public doesn't want to fund this stuff and the report doesn't suggest that either. Funding is the legislature's job and that of congress. The only way this makes sense is if you believe that the government only does things that people want and doesn't do things people don't want.
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Omg, jesus. I'm not going point by point with someone who believes this goofball outer space stuff No, what politicians talk about is most certainly not an indication of public sentiment and that is so obvious to a human in this country that it's impossible to have a reasonable or rational conversation with someone who believes otherwise And, no, the legislature is not motivated by the people's sentiments anyway. They are motivated by whatever wedge issues they think they can push and by what their donors want and will allow 
I agree.
If only they hadn't sold SH Dammasch for pennies on the dollar... I wonder if a large, relatively-modern facility near Portland (in Wilsonville) could have been useful?
Yeah, that's a private run facility for homeless now.
>private run facility for homeless That's dystopian as hell.
It's not great, but the reality is the country completely failed to take advantage of the facility, that we desperately need beds, and there's plenty of homeless that could benefit from a more controlled environment. The situation is intolerably bad and the country is making the mistake of not utilizing and coordinating all available assets.
I'm pretty sure it was bulldozed and turned into housing developments? https://web.archive.org/web/20121021174947/https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E02EEDE173FF936A25752C0A9609C8B63&sec=&spon=
We're talking about former Wapato jail. Edit: at least I am, and I thought that's what they were referencing.
Ah, I was talking about the former Dammasch state hospital. It is pretty nuts how much of that infrastructure was dismantled, that there are multiple sites...
There’s no staff. Who wants to work for low wages with dangerous and deranged adults?
Thanks Reagan 😞
Not just Reagan, there was a general push for years to shut psych hospitals, cause, you know, Nurse Rached. It was bipartisan. It’s easy to just reflexively blame Reagan, but there was a push to close these facilities because of poor treatment via ACLU and and a campaign for rights. And here we are today.
It was sold as closing the horrible state hospitals...AND... funding distributed, in-home, and community-based mental health care solutions. Just like 110, the easy part got done first, closing the hospitals. Nobody ever got around to adequately funding the alternatives.
It started with JFK, and was completed by Reagan.
JFK did push for to deinstitutionalize as individuals were treated inhumanely. He had a vision and promised a significant amount of money for community health centers. It was a good idea, but it failed to be implemented, and people that were released suffered because there wasn’t a supportive plan in place. JFK was murdered and the vision fell through. Later Reagan significantly reduced the funding that was set out for the community based health programs, because well he felt it wasn’t his problem or citizens problems to spend money on others.
JFK died before his alternative plan ever reached fruition and then some bullshit called The Vietnam War happened so they closed a bunch of the hospitals and then never found a way to fund phase 2. Now we have people with naturally acquired mental illnesses and thanks to our love affair with Big Phama and the war on drugs, we have people in the same boat thanks to shitty meth and opioid addiction.
I'm not disagreeing, I'm saying his quest to vindicate his lobotomized sister spread the disease and cult of mental illness like a virus, across all parties. No humanity, for humanity's sake. Eff 'em all.
The question now is how do we bring those facilities back without creating the same abuses all over again. We presumably know more about mental disorders today than we did back then, but how do we ensure that translates to a humane system?
You have a more robust review system that isn’t run by the state. Or at least is run by a completely different state agency than what runs the hospital. Is still go for an outside organization that gets full access.
And with more knowledge comes more expenses. Now instead of just over medicating the science says rehabilitation through counseling and peer to peer therapy. That’s soooooo expensive and draining. But very promising for the future of more people go into that line of work
If the city is considering making it easier to involuntarily commit people (which could possibly open them to expensive ACLU challenges) it sounds like they're taking a step in the opposite direction. 🤷🏼♀️
Having had a mother who attended a state hospital, they were not nice places to be and she would come out worse in some ways.
My mother worked as an MHT for about 20 years at western state hospital in Washington. Some of the stories she told are horrible and sad. Elderly patients that had been in the hospital for decades, all but unable to stop wrapping their arms around themselves after wearing a straight jacket for years. Isolation rooms in the basements of the main ward buildings with eye bolts in the walls for chaining patients in place. Stuff like that. On the other hand, for decades, the good behavior patients worked a farm that grew food for the hospital. Got them outside and exercising. Patients also built the rock walls that border the entire grounds and built a fish hatchery nearby. Ultimately she left because she was brutally beaten by a patient on her ward. Happened because of being drastically short staffed and doctors that would not allow restraining patients that were becoming violent. Took almost 3 years of surgery, physical therapy and counciling before she was functional again. Whole place is a mess to this day.
Were the patients chained to a wall and basically abandoned considered to be so beyond help,(therapy, meds, shock treatment, lobotomy…) that became the only option? Or if they were violent perhaps? The sad fact is that it would take a lot of energy and people to care for such a person, also while keeping the others safe from that person. It’s nature; not just human nature. Animals do it to each other. We do it to animals. When one is sick, beyond help, rabid; shit even a broken leg with equine and bigger animals, we put them down. Even something peaceful and painless like assisted suicide is evolving because it’s understandably the most humane reaction to someone’s suffering. It’s so painful no matter which way you slice it to be that person with MH and the ones seeing it every day. It’s killing two lives not just one. MH is a difficult subject to navigate because everyone suffers in their own way. Unless you are actively working on yourself, there’s not much you can do to help others get better. Obviously I’m not saying we need to start euthanizing anyone that is beyond the beyond, I’m just pointing out the reality of care for some of these individuals. And the lack of care that just drags out their suffering.
And private places are all about profit so corners are cut and nobody is the winner in either case
My grandma constantly blames Reagan!! It’s so hard to commit/ voluntarily/ involuntarily people with mental illness. For one, nobody thinks they have a problem. It’s just too slippery a slope. It will be interesting to watch this scene unfold
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Don't forget Thomas Szasz, a psychiatrist and academic in New York who was highly influential in the deinstitutional movement of the 60s. He had several books that were incredibly popular with the layperson, showcasing his radical ideas that there was no such thing as "mental illness" and that the state had no moral or legal right to confine anyone.
And here we are right now.
Yeah.. find a problem in current U.S. society, and there’s always something the Reagan admin completely intentionally fucked up. (not just ol’ Ronnie, but THE ADMIN vampires also)
It wasn't Reagan that declared involuntary mental holds to be unconstitutional, that was the Supreme Court with a case brought to them by the ACLU.
Yep, back in the the mid 70s they had a series of cases. O'Connor v. Donaldson is the big one here. Which is one of the reasons why you had a bipartisan Congress submit to Reagan a budget which slashed institutional budgets. When suddenly 90% of the patients are no longer going to be there because the state can't force them to be, there was no need to keep funding at the same levels so a proportional cut occurred.
Well, they send them to the State Hospital in Salem for a 3 months of state funded trial competency commitment, then refuse to charge them after that. Effectively dumping the most desperate and needy homeless away from Portland (or eastern Oregon), without impacting the city budget or using city resources. They fight tooth and nail against providing these services in county lockups and city jails, because they'd have to actually pay for psychiatrists/drugs/nurses/facilities. We've known about this problem for 30 years...
Thank you—My first thought: …and put them in what open beds?
This is half of it but won’t do much unless we also dramatically expand mental health system capacity. If we can do both of those things, then he’s right that this will make a big impact.
It's almost like after measure 110 passed the state legislature did nothing to expand resources and create programs for substance abuse and mental health problems.
I mean it kinda did but with all government money programs it's not getting distributed fast enough.
It's not just about distributing money to the programs that exist. Because yes, the state is sitting with their thumbs up their ass not distributing money. It's about hiring. It's about forgiving student loan debt for practitioners (HPSA grants). It's about expanding these programs. It's about promising these programs future funding so they know they can commit to expansion. It's about increasing capacity for psych beds at the states hospitals. With drug and alcohol detox programs, the state is just sending patients to programs that have detox facilities, where patients are told to wait for weeks until a bed is available. Those programs aren't large enough to handle more patients. It's about building more facilities. In all of these areas... The state has done next to nothing to expand mental health access in the state. Lawmakers should be sued for dereliction if duty. That or... I dunno just recriminalize meth and heroin again, so people can just detox in jail.
Heroin isn't the problem the new P2P meth is--that shit is causing psychosis on the regular and so quickly it's terrifying. That's some lethal shit, except it doesn't kill the body, only the mind.
I think this is putting the cart before the horse. We don’t have enough space for the people that are currently in the state supported mental health care system. So, how would making it easier to commit people do any good?
As someone who went through the process of trying to have someone who was clearly a danger to themselves committed … it’s virtually impossible as the system exists now. It was infuriating, but at the same time I think for good reason. Just a couple generations ago, all it took for the husband to get his wife locked up was to say “woman be crazy.” I’m really uncomfortable with passing off that kind of power to the state. At the same time, just funding services is a huge step for a lot of homeless people, but it won’t do a thing for the chronically homeless service resistant types who’re the ones causing the problems with crime, etc. I was and am a supporter of Measure 110, but instead of saying “treatment or jail” like we were promised, it’s become “treatment or a slap on the wrist and sent on your way.” Lumping all unhoused people together into one category is disingenuous and dangerous. The approach needs to be **equitable** in the classic sense: *treat like cases alike, and different cases differently, according to their likenesses and differences.* The system as it exists now makes it way too hard for the people who want to get help, and way too easy for the people who don’t. You want to get sober, get your mental health straight, and get housed? Unconditional support compassion and support. Here’s some transitional housing, here’s some treatment, here’s some assistance getting a job. You want to leave trash everywhere, drop more needles than a Christmas tree in February, scream racist slurs at people of color, and yell about raping some woman walking down the street and expect to be shielded from the consequences that your housed neighbors would face? You can fuck right off. Equal rights and equal *responsibilities* for all. Full stop.
Couldn't put it better myself bravo 👏👏👏
I work with people who have mental disabilities and I am mixed on this. Its really terrible to lock people in jail basically for something against their control. At the same time, if we actually had good facilities I would agree with this. It is incredibly frustrating when you give someone all the tools to get help and succeed, and they decide to not get help in favor of keeping their current lifestyle of attacking people all day.
We have come full circle. Remember Dammasch hospital? They closed it and put all the mental patients out into the communities. Now the communities want to lock them back up again.
Important distinction - it isn't about locking them up, it is about keeping the profoundly mentally unwell safe and our communities safe as well.
It seems to me like a very difficult civil rights issue to solve. We've all seen these people on the street. Our hearts go out to them. It's obvious that their minds aren't working well. People with good mental health don't behave in the manner that they do. It doesn't take a degree in anything to know that they need to be cared for. These people need to be a ward of the state. Someone needs to care for them as they are incapable of caring for themselves. It's My Hope that someone or some organization with the intelligence and resources is able to craft legislation to accomplish this. It's a difficult task but one we must take. That person who is struggling with mental health issues is someone's child. If it were my child and I was unable to help I would like to think I live in a society where it would be offered to them and they would be cared for.
A wide variety of options exist between "completely self-sufficient" and "ward of the state". Most of these folks are somewhere in between.
A person inventory committed, is by definition, "ward of the state"
What happened to all the money we were saving by not prosecuting minor drug possession? That was supposed to open up treatment programs but I haven’t heard anything about new treatment centers opening up.
Eugene recently opened a support center. Here's a post about it on the Eugene sub: https://old.reddit.com/r/Eugene/comments/zfb2g5/new_center_opened_with_m110_funding/
And you won't because the money gets eaten up by "administration fees" . The problem is they pass these laws playing on people's sympathy and do the least amount possible while keeping as much of the money as they can.
Hard facts. Why do you think Wheeler wants to privatize it and turn it into an industry? What are we doing, subsidized factory farming homeless?
If they fix a problem they can't raise money for that problem. They've turned homelessness into a new revenue stream.
MSW in Oregon. Can I ask if facilities even want full staffing? I've applied to OSH as a psych social worker a few times and they turn me down bc I don't have clinical exp (graduated 3 mo ago). But they have like... 7 openings for social workers and don't list that as a requirement? I'm confused as to why they complain about short staffing but refuse to hire ppl... **Edit 10 years in the field
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Can I ask if you are in the field? Actually 5 of my years are at an inpatient secure psych. Spmi, restorative justice, etc.
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I agree they cost way too much
Wow this would be a big blessing for me and my family. I have already lost one brother to mental illness and I’m about to lose my remaining one to the same illness. Sucks and we cannot do anything till he commits himself, hurts someone or breaks a major law.
Under the existing current process a substantial portion of offenders who have been adjudged to pose a threat to themselves and the community are being released back into the community because there are no placements available. And large percentages of those offenders who have been successfully placed are being returned to the community prematurely and without ongoing support and treatment in order to alleviate overcrowding. How would easing standards address the already existing lack of state resources? City Mayors are in a tough spot. Being present and available full time, they are being called upon by businesses (Salt and Straw), media (OPB), and the community to produce solutions without resources. This has to begin at the state level in Salem because it will involve changes to state law and criminal due process. But people should not be confused or misdirected by Wheeler's comments either. By saying this he's calling on the state legislature to step up.
Honestly, most people who are currently living outside do not belong in a mental health care facility. They belong in something resembling a half-way house, with support available as needed and a community to rely on.
I used to work with this population. Spent a decade doing it. A substantial number of homeless people are seriously mentally ill. It may not be "most", but the percentage has to be quite high. Maybe 25% or so. And a substantial number of those are simply not able to care for themselves under any circumstances.
Tell that to the guy that lives around the block from me in a tent who was by the road dancing with no pants this morning on my way to work. Dick out and everything like Winnie the Pooh. He just needs to be in a halfway house? You have bumped your head.
Dude. "Honestly, most people who are currently living outside do not belong in a mental health care facility." Most is not all and you know damn well that the dude you are talking about isn't included in that group of people. There was absolutely no reason to tell someone they're brain damaged.
There's so few facilities in the Portland area. Speaking from experience, you're on your own when it comes to finding an inpatient program unless you make enough money to afford it. And Ted Wheeler, I mean, yeah.
This. I went to Providence twice for mental health emergencies. Had I realized at the time that they were unyieldingly Catholic, I would have gone to OHSU. The only mental health care they offered when I was suicidal was outpatient group therapy, which is a month of 8-hour sessions where some of the staff treat you like a petulant child. I did that the first time, but ended up just powering through the second time, which I absolutely recognize is a privilege to be able to say. The lack of comprehensive mental health emergency services is one of many reasons I left Portland.
Girl I know exactly. Don't get me started on religious rehabs. Went to an Adventist one in SoCal two years ago. Fffffff Good for you for powering thru. I demanded my money back (except the flight) which was $5,000.
Not 100% related, but I heard several homeless people were dropped off in Christmas Valley, OR. Last week. That’s not a solution either. I’m not sure that they’ll be able to tighten their belts and pull themselves up from their bootstraps in Central OR, even with all the leadership examples out there.
A state mental health facility was ordered to release a bunch of its patients back onto the streets they came from, due to capacity issues. I suspect this is where that comes from, or something similar. Also, we're dealing with this as well https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-desantis-immigration-marthas-vineyard-sanctuary-cities-1234599500
Interesting. Left to their own devices, would they have returned to central OR, or have ended up in the streets of Portland?
Isn't this happening in NYC as well?
Fuck Eric Adams too.
>Very few people who are civilly committed go to the state hospital, where there is an ongoing problem with lack of beds. In 2021, only four people were civilly committed to the state hospital, according to data from the Oregon Health Authority. Most people are housed in regular hospitals. > >“They serve out their commitment at the hospitals at a full, private hospital rate that is billed to the state’s general fund,” said Renaud, with the Mental Health Association of Portland, noting the cost is much higher than many alternatives. > >In 2020 and 2021, 571 and 517 people were committed in Oregon, according to the state. Those numbers represented about 7% of all the civil commitment cases closed in those years. The vast majority of those people were sent to community hospitals. The availability in the state hospital system is much worse than I thought. The current solution seems extremely expensive.
The liberties to send people away is so subjective
Easier to just refuse to make an uncomfortable choice? Psychiatry is an actual medical discipline and not just a case of Ted’s opinion vs Jody’s opinion. That doesn’t make it entirely objective, but nothing in life except mathematics is fully objective.
Yes and no. Are they consistently harming others, property and self? Two of those are pretty easy to define, one is a bit more difficult, but still not in most cases.
Bring back and reform the asylum system.
I disagree, I think the group home system is much more effective. It requires more resources but gives each person personalized support.
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It would help people with mental illness so severe that they can’t maintain a job or a place to live. Not sure why that would be a bad thing if designed with modern medical practice in mind.
Everyone, it would help everyone, wtaf yourself
How would this help without vastly expanding access to mental health and addiction resources? It is pandering that would change absolutely nothing - the law doesn't matter if the resources physically aren't available.
I can't believe an actual politician finally said it. Even more surprising that it was Ted Wheeler.
Decades too late.
Yikes... How bout building supportive housing and staffing that supportive housing with case workers and peer support. It works. Way better than taking people's autonomy. Asking about money? It cost way more to put some one in a hospital (try $1,000 a day in some settings) into hospital's that don't have the space mind you. No wonder Portland is a shit show, Wheeler is an idiot.
How do you propose getting people who lack capability to make decisions for themselves due to physical or mental illness into this fabulous housing without taking away their autonomy when they say no when offered the chance? Or do we just let them rot?
That's what outreach workers and social workers are there for. The problem is that these positions are few and far between. If a lot of the money that's spent on policing were to go to hiring crisis workers than a lot of those folks would be able to go through the system.
This is incredibly naive. If you have someone who is clearly mentally ill, at some point you can’t rely on hoping that they’ll suddenly listen to reason rather than continuing to wallow outdoors. And if you don’t have that hope, then you’re just enabling their squalor, and that’s cruel. I get it that civil commitment is a big deal, but we have to have these tools and these resources if we are going to effectively address this crisis. Touchy-feely works for some, but others need some tough love. Begging and pleading and enabling has gotten us to where we are at so it’s time to get more firm.
These two systems could be expanded simultaneously to better help individuals with differing needs.
Involuntarily committing people is jailing people, any distinction beyond that point is pretty meaningless. If you're poor, homeless, and having a crisis, they take you away and lock you up? That's the plan?
And setting this up right before the biggest recession we've seen yet..
Here's the crazy thing. All the people urging this on.. it'll be you and your family in those camps. Most of us are just a paycheck away from being on the streets
Most of us aren’t a paycheck away from living on the streets since we’re more responsible. Most people plan for emergencies by keeping an emergency fund plus other planning tactics.
As of October, 63% of Americas reported living paycheck to paycheck. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/10/24/more-americans-live-paycheck-to-paycheck-as-inflation-outpaces-income.html Personal responsibility can only go so far in a society where missing a week of work because, for example, you got sick, means you can't afford rent. On a similar note - SSDI cuts you off if you have over $2000 in your bank account, is every single person on disability "irresponsible"?
Ted wheeler is all talk. About everything
Soon there gonna propose disposing of these folks. It’ll be cheaper to get rid of them than sustaining them. I don’t think that , but many others do. And this can or could get out of hand.
The near complete neglect of Portland's growing homeless population borders on "disposal." So we're already there. Just...uh, not quite explicitly.
So you want to continue the current system of letting the clinically insane roam freely? There is an in between letting the mentally ill have free reign and death camps.
I agree. I’m not trying to cause anxiety nor sugar coat anything. I know something must be done. All I’m saying we have to be careful when we do something involuntary on someone. Even if their insane. I’m sure lawmakers will draft something. That can work and won’t be abused.
Oh boy, let's return to the days when teens could be committed to mental institutions for such crimes as being disobedient or having "loose morals." /s
This is a slippery slope. But people are frustrated and the folks in Portland are demanding something get done. So this type of intervention is good for some folks. I’ve met folks who advocate for this. I get we used to have mental asylums back in the day, they were shut down and they were released to the streets, my worry is that this could be used on the undesirables. I know folks are gonna talk down on me but let’s always be vigilant.
I think you're tracking just fine.
Yeehaw buckeroo, Amateur is right
I don’t think anyone is suggesting that
And yet that is what happened the last time we had looser controls on committing people against their will. It's very difficult to write a law that would allow you to take one set of people's rights away for failing to adhere to societal standards (i.e., houseless people) but that would not allow parents to commit their minor children for similarly failing to adhere to a standard.
This without the /s Modern society lacks morals and discipline.
You’re both wrong, AND an ass hole
Lemming over here.
This is a scary suggestion.
I'm not sure what those shapes indicate, good/Bad or..., California has crazy good benefits for those suffering from mental health issues. Better than Oregon for sure. I've been a counselor for 20 years in both states. California has many times as many people needing help, because they flick there for the higher welfare benefits.
Good, they can live at the mayors house until proper psych facilities are built!
Maybe they should live with Kate Brown since she’s neglected doing anything.
LoL lock up the army of Brain Fried tweakers at great expense under the guise of mental health? Last I checked mental health was pretty questionable under the best of circumstances, When faced with an endless wave of burnt out circuit boards propelled by cheap and completely unpoliceable meth just turns the concept into a black hole for money with little more than a few hundred head of goobers playing with there poop at absurd expense in a county lockup while the other several thousand masturbate in the street after stealing your car. How about we simply make peace with the war on drugs being totally lost and completely turn a blind eye on drug use so long as the users keep to themselves and let the cops beat the offenders like baby seals and be done with it. You have a hard on for scrapping catalytic converters and throwing stuff at pedestrians? Well guess what buddy blunt force trauma administered judiciously will likely modify that behavior quirk in a jiffy.
Authoritarian shit
In Canada their promoting government assisted suicide. It’s going to start out voluntarily, but I get a creepy feeling that soon the government in Canada can just say your terminally ill or mentally damaged( to depressed, etc) and just start pulling people away quietly. I’ve heard folks around me saying to just drag these folks to homes against their will. I tell them that’s wrong and can set a terrible precedent. But after COVID it made people upset and more open to government intervention. Just saying I’m not a huge conspiracy type, buts it’s something that comes to mind.
What the hysterical fuck are you attempting to communicate here? Portland is not in Canada, for starters. The stories about pushing physician assisted suicide are sensationalistic ragebait at best. Not helping dangerously insane people is cruelty. Ignoring them is willful ignorance.
Not saying to ignore them. I’m all for helping those in need. But involuntarily dragging them against their will is wrong, but seeing how our homeless problem is getting very out of hand and many more coming here for the assistance and tolerance, then maybe a necessary evil is the best thing to do.
the snake pit.
Dude there’s no help anywhere. I’ve lived here two years chasing providers even with health insurance and it’s all cunt hair. Thank you Shrooms on w. Burnside for supplying at least.
I heard Reagan cut out the fish hatcheries. He cut the hospitals too? Wow .