Sad Thoughts

Another legacy of the '70's. Who can forget the standard storyline of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. In an op-ed piece "Why Cho Was Not Committed", Jonathan Kellerman, clinical professor of pediatrics and psychology at USC, voices a concern many of us have had for years. WSJ:

The basic premise of Community Psych--that severely mentally ill people could be depended on to show up for treatment voluntarily--never made sense to me. The core of the most common and debilitating psychosis, schizophrenia, is degradation of thought and reason. So the idea that people with fractured minds could and would make rational, often complex decisions about self-care seemed preposterous.

One day, I voiced that opinion in class, questioning if any mechanisms were being set in place to prevent a flood of schizophrenics from ending up on the streets, homeless, helpless, victims of crime and, in some cases, victimizers. The Community Psych professor--one of the liberationists--responded with a patronizing smile and a folksy account of the success of a program in rural Belgium or some such place, where humble working folk created a therapeutic milieu by volunteering to house psychotics in their humble homes and everything ended up peachy.

It is difficult to comment on the campus massacre with memory so raw, but this is important. Maybe others can be helped before it's too late. And maybe we will see fewer homeless people suffering and dying on the streets, refusing help.

And here's a postscript to think about, a quote from Dr. Sally Satel, in Why I Turned Right:

"My Hill experience gave me a startling insight: Liberals and conservatives seemed to have mirror-image approaches to paternalism. Liberals made intrusive laws for the competent while conservatives preferred to rely on individuals to make their own decisions. Conversely, conservatives preferred intrusive laws for the incompetent to whom liberals applied a hands-off policy. Liberals were comfortable with public health paternalism: intrusive nonsmoking laws, taxes on unhealthy products, strict risk-averse EPA and FDA regulations. . . .Yet, when a person was incoherent, defecating in the streets, or freezing a limb off in the park, then -- and only then -- did the principles of autonomy apply."