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In reply to the discussion: Wanna see what some mental health providers are thinking right now? [View all]politicat
(9,808 posts)Our juvenile center is $47 a day, last I saw, and juvenile centers are somewhat better funded (federal requirements for higher staff to patient ratios). Of course, there's insurance -- the Child Health system has helped quite a lot. Which doesn't help the adult system as much as it could, but seriously, VA hospitals aren't the only ones that "Article 99".
Residential drives me to beat my head on walls -- it could be so functional, even with such limited funding, but we've broken it. (Personal history: I'm descended from a long line of Quakers. The ones who stayed in England operated what was then called an asylum in the early 19th century. Looking at their records, they treated a lot of PTSD from the Napoleonic Wars, plus bipolar, severe depression and schizophrenia. Before William James, before Sigmund Freud, they were using methods I envy, and getting decent results given the state of medicine. And they did it on a shoe-string. We're reinventing some of their tools, but not fast enough.) I understand why we have the system we had, and why it failed, and how it failed, but there are days I wish for a TARDIS so I could go kick Reagan. (and ya' know, non-theist Quaker, so that's saying something.)
Thank you for staying as long as you did.