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Comment by dumbo-octopus | Hacker News Reader

A friend of mine has a severely mentally damaged family member who has decided it'd be a whole bunch of fun to have an indoor swimming pool. She repeatedly opens all the taps in their bathroom while arranging for all the water to spill everywhere, and proceeds to splash around in it. This has been going in daily for over a month now.

The sad part is the family has at this point given up entirely on correcting the behavior or even drying the house, and it's just a matter of time before there's irreparable damage and severe illnesses throughout. Even worse, it's a townhouse connected to other houses the the left and right, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the damage/sickenss spreads to the neighbors.

High density living definitely has its downsides...

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This person needs to be in a mental institution, not their house. This is also closely related to the crime problems people have with high-density living. The complete and utter failure of our society to correctly put people away is not a knock on "high density living", it's a symptom of the US shutting down asylums and preventing people who are dangerous to society from being locked away.

> This person needs to be in a mental institution, not their house

I'm with you in theory, but given it was the medical industry that damaged her in the first place, her mother is understandably very apprehensive about them having further access to her.

You neglect the dark side of this "lock the crazies away" solution: the so-called "doctors" are given full access to the person to arrange for whatever medical procedures they deem fit, with zero checks and balances, at the taxpayers dollar. In her case the "doctors" convinced her non-english-speaking parents to put their healthy daughter through a surgery generally considered elective/postponable at a very young age and (accidentally?) suffocated her while she was under, thereby permanently destroying her brain for life. The total amount taxpayers will pay the medical-pharmaceutical complex to keep her vegetive for her entire life is difficult to fathom.

All is not well in the state of public medicine.

When those decisions were made (to shut down asylums, etc.) what techniques were intended to backfill the same need? Did evidence suggest that something else (drugs at home?) would be at least similarly effective and more humane?

> When those decisions were made (to shut down asylums, etc.) what techniques were intended to backfill the same need?

Generally, the umbrella term for the intended replacement is "community-based mental health services," and that embraces a fairly broad continuum of care, in principal.

Among the things that did not happen was sufficient funding for these to be adequately provided publicly, or assurance that non-institutionalized, privately-insured people would be likely to have these covered by private insurance. While some progress on each has been made since, access remains an issue, as does service delivery, especially with the unhoused. (One thing that was not provided for with the withdrawal of institutionalization was a replacement for the room and board inherent in institutionalization.)

No, there was controversy over mistreated patients in a number of asylums.

There were campaigns to close the asylums based on this, but no real plan for what to replace them with.

> High density living definitely has its downsides...

I thought this story was fake, thank you for confirming.

It's not, but if you want to continue to live in fantasyland where anecdotes contrary to your preconceived notions simply don't exist, nobody can stop you.

It does sound lovely over there, for a time. But I'd imagine my unused brain would atrophy away.

> my unused brain would atrophy away

Further projection I see.

Nicely identified Gary, that was indeed a statement I was pretending to apply to myself when in fact it was being applied to you. Good eye!

But that's besides the point: why do you think it impossible for someone to have an experience that does not align with your preconceived notions with regards to high density housing?

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