Re: CHAT: Re : CHAT: conlangs and mental illness

>=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D Original Message From Constructed Languages List
<CONLANG@...> =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D
>Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 14/05/99 01:00:23  , Ed a =E9crit :
>
><< On the other hand, people with serious mental illnesses in America often
> cannot get and hold jobs, which means they have no medical insurance, which
> means they don't get treated, which means that if they don't have a strong
> support system in the family they end up babbling on streetcorners and dying
> of frostbite in January.
>
> Ed >>
>
>Come on, Ed. I don't know about much the US welfare system, but I'm sure
>there must be a kind of social care for mentally disabled people like we have
>in EU states.
I wish that were true, but it's not.  In the 1960s and 70s, there was wide
popular belief in the idea that mental illness was nothing but "being
different" and therefore that institutionalization was invariably a bad thing
- a societal jailing of the "different."  (Movies like "One Flew Over the
Cuckoo's Nest" manifested this phenomenon.)  In response to this, funding for
mental hospitals was slashed to the bone and anyone who was not an obvious and
immediate danger to themselves or others was turned out onto the streets.

This is quite seriously the reason that a large fraction of America's
schizophrenic population can be seen wandering the streets of its large cities
in ragged clothes and sleeping in gutters, and a fraction of that population
dies every cold winter (since space in shelters is limited and they are not
always a safe place to be anyway).

(This is not to deny that there may have been serious problems in the care and
treatment of the mentally ill *before* this movement in the 60s and 70s; it is
only to point out that the idealistic solution that was put into effect was a
cure worse than the disease.)

Someone very close to me benefited immensely from a few weeks spent in a
psychiatric ward (it was a real turning point in her illness; she said that
she was able to start getting better there because it was an environment in
which, unlike the outside world, she didn't have to pretend not to have a
problem).  But she could not have gotten there before she became actively
suicidal.  You simply *cannot* be hospitalized for psychiatric reasons unless
you are either actively suicidal or murderous.  (Perhaps you can if you can
afford to pay for it yourself, but even then it's difficult to get it
authorized.)

In general, lack of a government-sponsored support system for people who are
disadvantaged in any way is one of the most distinctive differences between
the U.S. and Europe, government-wise.  I don't understand why it's so.  But it
is.

Ed

--
Ed Heil * edheil@mailandnews.com
      "When you get your Ph. D.
      How happy you will be
      When you get a job at Wendy's
      And are honored with 'Employee of the Month.'"
       -- Bare Naked Ladies, "Never Is Enough"