Miriam Carey and White House incident

[johnelmore]

Miriam Carey seems like another poster child for why we need a better mental health system. Lets say all firearms suddenly vanished there are still cars and so many other devices to use.

I am not a doctor, but I dont need an education in the medical sciences to see the obvious. Right now jobs are just not there and there are a bunch of people with mental illness festering at home. I expect for events like this to happen again and again and will take many forms.

Will one day they figure out the mental health system is woefully inadequate or simply not being taken seriously?

 

[cdoc42]

We can't just fix the mental health system until we fix the civil rights system.
The local police came to my office one day with a guy in the back seat of the cruiser who was just staring out into space, obviously not with the rest of us. He had been chasing his mother around the house with a butcher knife and the police wanted me to get him admitted to the local psych ward. The bottom line was we needed a judge and court order because he had not yet inflicted harm on his mother and admitting him without his consent could have been her demand because she just wanted to get him out of the house. I believe things have changed to a degree since that time because now he can be admitted for a short period of time (enough to obtain control?) because he represents a threat to someone else. But we still need testimony to that effect.

 

[ClydeFrog]

HIPPA laws, mental health....

This subject has come up before on TFL. Most recently after Sandy Hook 2012.
Dr Drew Pensky said on TV in late 2012 that the HIPPA laws & civil liability/risk mgmt has had a major - impact on these issues because doctors are limited to what they can do.

In 2007, I had a young male become unstable & suicidal at the hotel I worked at. The 2 sheriff deputies who came out didn't even search the young man. They just opened the SUV door & let him get in. The deputies took him to a mental health center without incident.
As I posted before, more sworn LE officers & first responders need mental health skills & crisis training. The NYPD's elite ESU & the FBI's HRT(hostage rescue team) has started to train their sworn personnel in these methods.

 

[Wreck-n-Crew]

First off this is not gun related.

Will one day they figure out the mental health system is woefully inadequate or simply not being taken seriously?

You can't fix something that give's the Mentally Ill the right to refuse treatment. Then there is the can of worms you open up when the Government starts forcing pills down peoples throat or locking them up for not getting treatment.

Mentally Ill people going on sprees or using their car as a weapon just can't be stopped from ever happening again and forcing people to get help when you don't know they need it, just like in this case is an overreach of government. No different than taking guns from the citizens to prevent gun crime.

I wish there was an easy answer, but the fact is there will be cases like this and it were not so publicized, we would not have the feeling that we are losing control.

 

[Spats McGee]

There are clearly some problems with this country's mental health system. However, this thread is simply too far removed from TFL's mission to leave open.