San Francisco Health Program to Expand Transgender Coverage

[Angrboda]

I think they should focus first on the homeless being fed and having adequate healthcare before doing something like this. Preservation of life takes priority.

Many of those homeless used to be institutionalized.

That is, until deinstitutionalization became fashionable.

Deinstitutionalization isn't the main problem, the defunding of the mandates to fund deinstitutionalization did the most damage. We're seeing that partially redressed by increased public awareness, improved parity in health care, and an improved lobby by the organized mentally ill and friends, but when they defunded Kennedy's initiative, that left a lot of folks between the proverbial rock and a hard place. There are still mental hospitals for the chronically unable to take care of themselves, but you have to get them there, and that's not always easy, in part thanks to the improvement in patient rights and institutional observance of those rights. But the services Kennedy envisioned simply were never provided.

But getting someone committed isn't always easy, and nowadays it's getting more difficult. I've been committed once, for two years, and as a long time occupier of the mental health system, I know just what I can do, and what I can't do, if I want to stay out of Anoka Regional. I probably belong there. I make no bones about the fact that I'm going to try to kill myself again at some point. But like I said, I know what I can say, and what I can't say, and so I don't, and they simply cannot touch me. festive1's dad is another case in point. Ill, but not threatening to kill himself or someone else. Should we lock people up on the suspicion that they might be dangerous, when we wouldn't do that for ordinary dangers? Because we know what's good for them? Because they don't know what they're doing, so we should take their right to decide away from them? Help me out here, I'm not getting what your chosen rationalization for locking up the non-dangerous and reasonably safe, but free, mentally ill is supposed to be. I get the impression that in your world, I would have never left the hospital in 2008, after a serious suicide attempt, and talking about returning to the mother ship, and doing it again if given the chance. Would you like to see me locked up? Somehow, I don't believe that, and as noted, if anyone belongs there, I probably do. So you tell me, why would you like to see me locked up?