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Comment by shuckles | Hacker News Reader

> 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.

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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.

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

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

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