Mental Health Care Today: What The Flaws Are And How We Can Fix Them

What is a psychiatric disorder? A psychiatric disorder is a mental illness diagnosed by a mental health professional that impacts your thinking, moods, and/or behavior and seriously increases your risk of disability, pain, death, or loss of freedom. A few examples of a psychiatric disorder are: Depression, Personality Disorders, Anxiety Disorders and Schizophrenia. People that suffer from any psychiatric disorder deserve the help and treatment they need to live a happy, fulfilling life. America is failing with that regard. America blames the ailed for their sickness. The parents of ailed children are castigated constantly. Society continually describes the sick as people with ‘mental problems’ or ‘troubled’. Society blames these people for their own downward spirals.

America stigmatizes these people who mentally suffer on a daily basis. The mental health system is underfunded, and it is only getting worse. America does nothing to help these people.

A psychiatric disorder is a biological illness, much like cancer. A psychiatric disorder is just like any other illness. What do we do with people who have cancer? We treat them! We do not toss them out onto the street and watch them fail, die, or go to jail. We do not abandon people who have liver disease and tell them they are on their own. We treat them! This leads to a huge question: How should we treat those that have psychiatric disorders that cannot be treated in a facility that only tends to people with acute psychiatric disorders (something that tends to be able to be quickly fixed in 10 days or less.)?

One of the possible ‘solutions’ I keep hearing is to bring back psychiatric asylums. Let me talk about that for a moment.

In the early 19th century, the mentally ill were stuffed away in an institution — more commonly known as an insane asylum. At these asylums, patients were held in horrendous conditions, and were treated very poorly, sometimes even worse than pigs on a farm. The patients in these institutions would speak up about the torture they went through, but the asylums would fight back, often claiming that the patients shouldn’t be believed because they are insane. The institutions wanted to protect themselves, and they did — at the cost of human suffering and even murder.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the asylums were receiving so many admissions that they were becoming overcrowded. Even back then, funding was cut. Many patients would starve to death. At this point, the asylums were known for terrible living conditions, lack of hygiene, and the abuse of patients.

In the 1950s, there was a movement for the deinstitutionalization of these institutions. There was arguments against the institutionalization of these mentally ill patients, stating that community services would be cheaper, and psychiatric medications made it more feasible to reintroduce these people to the community.

Fast forward to today, in 2018. I think that the movement to deinstitutionalize the mentally ill has been a failure. People with chronic, severe mental illnesses are still in facilities — only now, instead of being in an asylum, they are in medical hospitals, nursing homes, and more recently — jails and prisons. According to my research, these places are more expensive than sending the mentally ill to a long — term psychiatric institution.

In the world we live in today, people with a chronic psychotic illness tend to cycle between emergency hospitalizations and inadequate outpatient care. They are treated by psychiatrists who work at community mental health centers, who are quite frankly, overworked. On top of that, the psychiatrist tends to only have a 20 minute slot available per session. Many mentally ill people struggle with homelessness, and even incarceration.

According to one report, group homes, community residences, and residential treatment facilities have undergone massive budget cuts. The amount of staff continues to decrease, wages continue to plummet, and the workers are less skilled. Because there are fewer staff, outbursts among clients escalate. Due to the frequency of these outbursts, the staff of the facility have no choice but to call the police and have the person arrested and held in jail, or call the police to have them mental health arrested and held in an acute psychiatric facility.

This report argues that we need asylums to help ‘treat’ these people.

I believe that these things are still no reason to create a ‘modern day asylum’.

Asylums are a type of prison, that is, arguably even worse than today’s prison system. The mentally ailed didn’t even receive a release day once they were admitted to the asylum. Their release day was the day they died. To think that we can do even better today, among the budget cuts, fear of mental health conditions, and misconceptions about what constitutes effective treatment, is absolutely ludicrous.

I believe that we need to be paying more attention and treating the underlying issues that tend to create mental health challenges. Examples of such issues are: poverty, inequality, child abuse and domestic violence. We need to realize that there tends to not be any personalization of treatment. Therapists, psychiatrists, and other professionals tend to take a one — size — fits — all approach. Each individual has a different set of needs. We need to cater to each individual need to get to the root of the problem, and eventually — solve it.

The earlier report says that group homes have too few staff members, low wages, and less skilled workers. How would this change by returning the mentally ill to asylums? The report argues that we need asylums to help treat the mentally ill, but how would a 21st century asylum be any better than the 19th — 20th century versions? There is a simple solution that will solve the problems of fewer staff members, lower wages, and less skilled workers. Fix it!

If the government ceases to cut the mental health funding, mental health facilities will be able to pay their workers higher wages, thus making it so people want to work there. To address workers that are less skilled, provide more training! There is only so much a college textbook will teach. If you want successful workers, you need to provide more on — site training.

Society also needs to realize that there is no such thing as an untreatable person. There is, however, such thing as a treatment provider who decides to give up on the person. Recovery isn’t impossible. It’s the exact opposite. To go back to putting people in an asylum would be synonymous to taking the last 30 years of progression in the mental health field, and negating it.

1 out of 4 people will deal with a mental health challenge at some point in their life. We can’t afford to fail them. They deserve just as much of a chance for survival as the next person.

There is one way we can try to fix this: advocacy. We can implement advocacy based strategies and principles we should embrace and promote to improve our mental health system.

1. Greater awareness. It is important to have and know accurate information about one’s mental health and illness. After all, it is going to be hard to treat something that you know nothing about.
2. Public education. There is a huge need for accurate, scientific based information about mental health ailments. I believe that we should start teaching as early as elementary schools — how to handle difficult emotions, what a healthy relationship looks like, and how to have good social skills. We should also help these children realize that it is okay to ask for help. This education should continue all the way through the senior year of high school.
3. Inclusion. So many of us feel like we are being forced to fit into specific categories, whether it is by race, poverty, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, disability, political beliefs, and much more.
4. Collaboration. Collaboration is key in most things in order for it to be successful, along with healthy conversation and a healthy community. I think we should work to create local, national and international coalitions to bring the people together to share important information, coordinate advocacy initiatives and break down the walls that separate us.
5. Civility. We must remember how trivial it is to show basic civility, including: sensitivity, respect, and appropriate language that does not offend others. We might not always agree, but we can agree to disagree.
6. Compassion. There is still a lot of suffering in this world. We cannot forget this fact. Many of those that have a mental illness lack awareness of their ailment, and even lack awareness regarding where to go for treatment. We must fix this.
7. Funding. All of the greatest innovations we might be able to come up with to help treat people who are mentally ill will mean nothing if we can’t even get them to the people who require them. The mental health system needs money to initiate new services, and expand pre-existing ones.
8. Action. We can no longer diffuse responsibility and leave it to others to step forward and speak up for better care and services. We must all speak up.
9. Persistence. Although it might be easy to become discouraged when year after year there is little progress in obtaining funding and improved mental health services, a change in the system can take many years or even decades.
10. Hope. There is a wide range of proven and effective treatments for people who are mentally ill. We also have a steadfast desire to make things better.

The need to fix this slowly deteriorating mental health system is great, and collectively — we can and will make a difference.