I SOOOO hate the hospitals in my town!

[kansasgal]

I work in a homeless shelter, and one of the things I do is work with people with mental issues.

Have one person who was suicidal, cutting, anorexic, addicted to pain pills, etc. He/she needed to go to the mental institute to get assistance. Since insurance says they have to be referred by hospital, off we go.

Wait 3 hours in hospital for someone to come do the intake. SW from local mental health department comes in, says they are "Not crazy enough" to go to mental institute.

It took me 3 freaking months to get this person to admit they have issues and agree to go, and they are not crazy enough???? I fought the ER SW and finally got them to admit this person to a mental ward for help. They signed them in and then released them in 36 hours....back to the shelter.

I HATE the local hospitals with a PASSION! I am a Social Worker, I want to HELP people....not cause them more pain.

[Seshat]

At least in my part of the world, the mental health care system is underfunded. Believe me, I know what you're going through: A is schizoaffective, and the sheer number of times D and I have had to tend her ourselves, unsupported by professionals, because we couldn't get professionals to help her is utterly ridiculous.

She has been physically dangerous to herself; and potentially dangerous to us (using her full uninhibited strength, not actually trying to hurt us): yet tossed into the 'not our problem' field by all sorts of places.

[kansasgal]

I feel your pain. In my personal life, Hubby has PTSD/BI-Polar with Schizoid tendencies/depression/etc and son has depression that has led to cutting (you would think as a social worker I would have seen that one coming ....nope). Trying to get help is like trying to make a shoelace out of cooked spaghetti.

[Amina516]

If theres one thing I hate, its the mental health programs and laws and rules and regulations and financing. I have seen people discharged and given instructions to "follow up", when they really need acute, NOW treatment. I have seen people come in worried sick with family members that need drug/alcohol rehab, or those who have threatened and committed violence look in shock as their family member or friend is discharged and told the are probably ok.

Its not one person thats broken. Its a system. I wish I could do more to fix it.

[Seshat]

Kansasgal, one of my friends is a suicide prevention research psychologist. Or at least was - until her fiancee committed suicide. While she was in the same house. She was the one who found him.

Now she's suffering grief-caused depression, which she's only now managing to come out of enough to try to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.


That's the insidious thing about mental illness, especially the depressions and anxieties. The person suffering from them wants/needs to hide it: it's part of the disease.

[Sapphire Silk]

If theres one thing I hate, its the mental health programs and laws and rules and regulations and financing. I have seen people discharged and given instructions to "follow up", when they really need acute, NOW treatment. I have seen people come in worried sick with family members that need drug/alcohol rehab, or those who have threatened and committed violence look in shock as their family member or friend is discharged and told the are probably ok.

Its not one person thats broken. Its a system. I wish I could do more to fix it.

I've seen the same thing; the revolving door. Here's how it works.

Patient comes in saying he wants to kill himself. We put him in a paper gown in a room that is usually filled with a lot of stuff you could use to hurt yourself if you really wanted to.

Then the patient waits several hours for the assessment person to show up OR if there is no assessment person for the hospital social worker to find a bed that will take the patient.

This can take a lot of time, especially if the patient has no insurance. There have been instances of patients held in the ER for up to a week at a time because a bed could not be found, but the patient was so psychotic or suicidal no ER doc would dare to discharge them.

As a result, many ERs are building special, secure mental health rooms to house these patients safely until a place is found for them. However, they still don't get any treatment while they're there, except meds to calm them if they get out of control.

It's a two pronged problem:

1. We don't want to put money into it. It costs money to provide adequate mental health care, and drugs aren't enough. Therapy costs a lot (though it is more cost effective than meds), but insurance doesn't want to pay for it because it takes so long to get results (minimum one year).

2. Rights of the mentally ill. They have the absolute right to refuse treatment. The problem is, denial is part of the illness. So many refuse to take their meds or to go into inpatient treatment (if they can get it), and self medicate with drugs and alcohol. Families who recognize the illness are blocked from being proactive by laws meant to protect the rights of the patient. And there are good reasons for those laws; our mental health system has a dark history of abuse and of simply warehousing people.

[Seshat]

Some of us don't deny, and are compliant patients. But it's rough, and the days when the illness is more in control, D often has to talk us into things.