[PEN-L:11971] Re: Big mouth

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Max Sawicky:
>
>My brother was diagnosed chronic schizo when
>he was 20.  Now he's 45.  He's been living with
>his mother, unable to hold a job or take elementary
>care of himself.  In front of a judge, he's as lucid
>as Socrates.  Other times he talks incessantly about
>the Mafia, the FBI, and the CIA conspiring against
>him.   He writes poetry.  He can't be committed. He would only
>consent to live in a country club-type facility that indulged his
>every want, which my family can't come close to affording.  So he's
>basically ruined my mother's life.  I wouldn't tolerate his behavior
>and let him ruin mine, in which case he would probably end
>up on the street.
>
>The only fix for this is coercive confinement, which
>we wish would be generously funded by society, but
>we know probably would not be.  In any case, it's
>irrelevant because such confinement is illegal.
>
>I know what I'm talking about, here if nowhere
>else.
>

Welcome to the club. I had a brother who hung himself in a mental hospital
in 1971. Frankly, anecdotes like this are about as useful as Ronald
Reagan's anecdotes about welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

The problem we are dealing with is a social problem. The American people
were sold a bill of goods when they were told that the solution to inhumane
mental hospitals like Boston's infamous Mattewan, subject of Frederic
Wiseman's "Titicut Follies", was to empty the mental hospitals while giving
each discharged patient medication to help them function.

The true solution is group homes where the chronically ill can get adequate
supervision and medical attention. Even though these group homes are
cheaper than the old-time mental hospitals, the ruling class doesn't want
to foot the bill. Psychotics, like disabled children and poor people with
AIDS, are just not important enough. This is the significance of the
balanced budget austerity program of the Democrat-Republican party. Less
money for social services so that people like Bill Gates can afford a $30
million house instead of a $20 million house.

Louis Proyect