How a Bus Full of Homeless People Could Dash the Hopes of Teenagers for the Future of Mental Illness
Written by Logan Mazzettia, Posted on , in Section Teens & Tweens
Imagine for a second that you have a mental illness. OK, actually. That's pretty difficult for someone without a mental illness to do. But try really hard to do this: imagine that someone you care about has an incredibly difficult time doing almost everything, and that it's not their fault -- it's not laziness, it's not poor values, it's nothing like that -- it's just mental illness.
OK, now imagine that this person is at the end of their rope. Family has tried to help. Friends have reached out. It's been incredibly frustrating for everybody. Unable to keep a job, this person becomes homeless.
The situation gets worse. Having given up all hope, he or she decides to commit suicide with a butcher's knife.
Now, an unsuccessful suicide attempt has landed this person in a Las Vegas psychiatric treatment center.
What seems like the most logical thing to do from this point on? Is it try to secure treatment? Is it try to find programs that can assist this person in trying to secure treatment? No?
If you guessed 'put them on a bus to San Francisco with a pocketful of antipsychotic meds and a couple of brown bag lunches', you guessed correctly according to the Rawson-Neal Psychiatric Center in Las Vegas and other facilities throughout the state of Nevada.
Our Kids Don't Believe We Are Committed To Their Mental Health Because of The Low Priority We Reserve For Mental Health Issues as a Society
We are in the middle of a crisis. I won't pretend that the reasons this happened to the man who this happened to, nor the estimated 1,500 others who received the same treatment, are simple. They're not. Our healthcare system doesn't know what to do with the mentally ill. Homeless and mental illness go hand in hand. You can't work on one of those problems without having to work on the other, which makes it extremely complicated.
But certainly, all rational people can agree that shipping these people off to another state is indicative of the fact that we have gone far down the wrong path in treating mental health issues.
When it comes to teens and mental health, we have to be absolutely, totally aware that these are the kinds of outcomes that may await them if we do not seek treatment while we have the opportunity. Addressing problems before they get out of hand is pretty much the only weapon that many parents will have in helping their children avoid these kinds of horrifying situations.
We have to take mental health seriously as a country. We have to recognize that there is a large population of people who literally cannot help themselves. It's not a political issue. It's a matter of compassion, and for the mindbogglingly large number of homeless people with serious mental health issues, many of whom once were teens with bright futures, it is a matter of life and death.
