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Comment by Kittensmittens3 | Hacker News Reader

Seeing articles like this gives me hope that there is momentum in an eventual trend that will cure mental illness, or treat it with a method that isn't antipsychotics.

I personally believe that in the US, our society is quick to demand people seek treatment, even forcibly. Yet the treatment available is insufficient, incredibly destructive and often ineffective.

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> I personally believe that in the US, our society is quick to demand people seek treatment, even forcibly.

As far as I can tell, the US is unusually permissive of people with mental health issues. Entire cities have thousands of people who are visibly unwell and free to do whatever they want.

Where do you live and what happens to mentally unwell people in your society? [Just curious]

I live in San Francisco but am familiar with Denmark where it's relatively straightforward for a physician to involuntarily commit someone for ~a month at a time and the state to extend it in six month increments. To contrast, LPS in California limits involuntary holds to 72 hours and makes it very hard to hold anyone longer than that even despite recent reforms.

Who pays to keep a mentally unwell person at a hospital for six months at a time in Denmark?

You already know the answer to that. It's the same for all social services.

The same people who pay to keep mentally unwell people housed in residential hotels with inconsistent (but expensive) social worker based health treatments, their ER visits, Medicaid, etc. in the United States. Big cities spend huge amounts per capita on public health. The difference in results isn't explained by the purse.

Taxes

This is due to a lack of resources to commit everyone. There are still plenty of people that are committed, such as the main character of this article.

Those resources were explicitly redirected to community based nonprofits that spend most of their budgets facilitating the lives of the aforementioned people who would previously be in locked institutions. You've got cause and effect backwards.

You're right. They still commit some people though.

And I didn't mean to say specific policies are in play. It's the outcry of the surrounding communities that have a loud but powerless group that want people forcibly locked up. (Seattle here)

While funding is an issue, we used to do it. Attitudes changed. There's simply not a lot of support for involuntary psychiatric care outside some immediate emergency.

I'm not so sure it was due to attitudes changing. At least here in Ontario funding for many long term facilities was scrapped in the 1990s as governments slashed budgets for non-essential services to cut costs while higher levels of government downloaded services to lower levels. Smaller municipalities simply cannot afford to fund social services when property taxes are their primary source of funding. The effect was the same as the higher level of governments canceling many of these programs, albeit without having to take as heavy a political hit.

The same thing happened to many low income housing programs in Canada as well. Few people remember that there were once federal programs to provide affordable housing which were also part of the 1990s cost cutting exercises.

Locally we have a few long term retirement homes that are municipally funded, but capacity is very limited with long wait times.

Everyone I talk to in the US is in favor of reopening the institutions. Seeing a man with a gangrenous leg shitting himself while having a conversation with his “invisible CIA handlers” is enough to undo the Reagan era effects of seeing/reading one flew over the cookoos nest

It’s not. There are lots of “rights” people have to live untreated on the street

In San Francisco I saw a naked homeless man sitting in a wheelchair shove a dildo in and out of his anus right on a sidewalk. Even though I looked away the exact moment I realized what I was seeing I will never forget it despite really wishing I could.

If you ever want to experience pure hell, go on antipsychotics for a month. They totally eviscerate your ability to be creative. I was given them during a misdiagnosis of mental health issues and I think I'd rather choose to be homeless instead of going back on them for any reason. Also don't make the mistake I did and quit them cold turkey. If you don't taper them off, you can have seizures. Not fun.

Not to take away from your own experience at all, but you can't make sweeping statements about psychiatric medication like that. As far as I know most of them are very personal, and it's quite common for any given medication to be a terrible experience for some while it's a life saver for others.

I'm sorry you had a bad experience with them, but that wasn't my experience. The antipsychotic I am on helps me immensely in not being sucidal and being able to live some semblance of approximating a normal human life.

This is noted as a common and serious side effect that many people experience. Unfortunately it's also noted as a symptom of the common diseases these medications treat. It's seemingly a mess of figuring out what parts of suffering are medication related or disease related. This is why this discovery in the article is so fascinating - science doesn't even know what causes this in the first place, thus it's impossible to decipher which is which. We just know it can address some symptoms in some people and in general some feel the tradeoff is better.

Should be obvious, but ability to function triumphs ability to be 'creative'. Hell with creativity in fact. It comes last in the list of priorities..

I can tell you're not an artist

Not if your ability to make money is predicated on your ability to be creative.

Your ability to be creative is a distant second to being able to take care of yourself.

You are not the only consideration, there is also the rest of the population. It’s not like we have some endless “West” you can go to and be by yourself.

When problematic people get put away, historically, it’s jail. Psychiatric institutions were considered an alternative that was better. Yes, way back in the day they quickly became really bad places, but if done better, are a far better alternative than what we do today.

I used to live near one. I remember they had extensive gardens because gardening was therapeutic for some of the patients, low cost, time consuming, had a reward, etc.

There is a lot of hope; I've had a pet "notion" for years that about every decade we look back at the previous one and wonder how we lived in such barbaric times, at least in terms of medicine.

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