Thinking the Unthinkable
[font color="dark gray" size="3" face="face"] When I asked my sons social worker about my options, he said that the only thing I could do was to get Michael charged with a crime. If hes back in the system, theyll create a paper trail, he said. Thats the only way youre ever going to get anything done. No one will pay attention to you unless youve got charges.
I dont believe my son belongs in jail. The chaotic environment exacerbates Michaels sensitivity to sensory stimuli and doesnt deal with the underlying pathology. But it seems like the United States is using prison as the solution of choice for mentally ill people. According to Human Rights Watch, the number of mentally ill inmates in U.S. prisons quadrupled from 2000 to 2006, and it continues to risein fact, the rate of inmate mental illness is five times greater (56 percent) than in the non-incarcerated population. (http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled)
With state-run treatment centers and hospitals shuttered, prison is now the last resort for the mentally illRikers Island, the LA County Jail, and Cook County Jail in Illinois housed the nations largest treatment centers in 2011 (http://www.npr.org/2011/09/04/140167676/nations-jails-struggle-with-mentally-ill-prisoners)
No one wants to send a 13-year old genius who loves Harry Potter and his snuggle animal collection to jail. But our society, with its stigma on mental illness and its broken healthcare system, does not provide us with other options. Then another tortured soul shoots up a fast food restaurant. A mall. A kindergarten classroom. And we wring our hands and say, Something must be done. [/font]
--Read the whole blog post here - [link:http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html|
I thought this was a compelling description of the difficulties parents are faced with in getting help for a troubled child. There are several posts in the comments section where other parents indicate they are going through the same thing.
I hope that, in addition to coming up with some meaningful restrictions on guns, we can also address the lacking mental healthcare system.