Suicide rates are soaring. There are no easy solutions, but Colorado is one of 13 states that has embarked on an experiment in helping people find the time they need to address life crises.
Translated, "I'm in Colorado and I've got to do something to write it off as a business expense...."
Mightn't a 157% increase to a mental health help line since it's inception be more a result of people becoming aware of it rather than an increase in mental illness since that time. Proof of causation please?
Learning that more people die of heat stroke at the same time ice cream sales increase does not mean that ice cream needs to be outlawed.
1.2 billion is nothing to shake a stick at. But I've got a better idea of what to do with it. Defund the police. They'll thank you for it. Seriously.
Oh, not the administrators. Like any bureaucracy, they like to grow their budgets.
But fact is, police, jails, and prisons are poor methods (and the most expensive) for dealing with mental health issues. They're not really built for it, trained for it, or given the tools to succeed. A doctor in a mental hospital can (and does) write orders for patients to take needed medicine against their will. A doctor in a jail, for the most part, cannot and does not. Waiting until a patient decompensates to the point of passing out or self harm before sending them to the state hospital - who stabilizes them - then the process starts again. It's macabre. In a Catch-22 kind of way.
With poorer outcomes than if the same money is spent on mental healthcare. If you tell a regular cop that if you are going to spend your money making sure folks take their medicine rather than waiting until 2 weeks later when he's attacking you with a machete while covered in his own feces at 3 in the morning, I'd bet he'd be for it.
Decades ago, Dems and Reps deinstitutionalized mental facilities, with the promise that rights would be protected and costs lowered. That care that had been given in the hospitals would be provided in the community.
Instead, we've gotten the worst of both. We quit providing support for the hospitals, we strangled healthcare in the community. Why don't we ask the people working on Community Health boards and the administrators of mental health facilities what long term investments they'd like to see that money invested in, rather than just starting a novel new program because we read about it on a road trip?
Square peg, meet round hole.
Translated, "I'm in Colorado and I've got to do something to write it off as a business expense...."
Mightn't a 157% increase to a mental health help line since it's inception be more a result of people becoming aware of it rather than an increase in mental illness since that time. Proof of causation please?
Learning that more people die of heat stroke at the same time ice cream sales increase does not mean that ice cream needs to be outlawed.
1.2 billion is nothing to shake a stick at. But I've got a better idea of what to do with it. Defund the police. They'll thank you for it. Seriously.
Oh, not the administrators. Like any bureaucracy, they like to grow their budgets.
But fact is, police, jails, and prisons are poor methods (and the most expensive) for dealing with mental health issues. They're not really built for it, trained for it, or given the tools to succeed. A doctor in a mental hospital can (and does) write orders for patients to take needed medicine against their will. A doctor in a jail, for the most part, cannot and does not. Waiting until a patient decompensates to the point of passing out or self harm before sending them to the state hospital - who stabilizes them - then the process starts again. It's macabre. In a Catch-22 kind of way.
With poorer outcomes than if the same money is spent on mental healthcare. If you tell a regular cop that if you are going to spend your money making sure folks take their medicine rather than waiting until 2 weeks later when he's attacking you with a machete while covered in his own feces at 3 in the morning, I'd bet he'd be for it.
Decades ago, Dems and Reps deinstitutionalized mental facilities, with the promise that rights would be protected and costs lowered. That care that had been given in the hospitals would be provided in the community.
Instead, we've gotten the worst of both. We quit providing support for the hospitals, we strangled healthcare in the community. Why don't we ask the people working on Community Health boards and the administrators of mental health facilities what long term investments they'd like to see that money invested in, rather than just starting a novel new program because we read about it on a road trip?
Just a thought.