Down a Rabbit Hole

 

De-institution

The 1970’s saw a great effort to “de-institutionalize” housing for people incapable of caring for themselves. Closing ‘insane asylums’, for lack of a better description. The grandiose idea was for community based group homes to provide a better setting.

 How has that worked out?

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This is an issue that deeply affects me. My first born, now 51, was severely autistic from birth. All of my adult life he has required my attention, and finances, to deal with his challenges. NOTE: I don’t ask for anyone’s pity. God gave him to me and he is my responsibility. Case closed.

Who doubts much of the homeless in our communities are individuals with major mental issues?

Acceptance by others is the greatest desire of the mentally impaired. Of that I am certain. The community they fit into today is the drug culture/homeless population.

What are their alternatives?

A decent overview our history of people afflicted with mental illness and developmental issues can be found here. This isn’t light or pleasant reading and will bring out many shouts of, “yeah, but”.

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It does illustrate people who recognized the problem and made efforts to come to solutions. To me, that trumps apathy.

I will be blunt. We need ‘insane asylums’ to safely house those who cannot care for themselves or are a danger to others. Policing one or more state institutions will always be easier than scores of private group homes. Advocates, such as myself, can and will raise hell when One Flew over the Cuckoo Nest.

Not one of my usual posts, to be sure. 

What brightens my day and eases my burdens.

As always, YMMV

 

Homelessness

Once again WSF goes off on a rant. You have been warned.

The roots of the current homeless community go back to the late 60’s – early 70’s to the deinstitutionalize movement. The noble endeavor was to create community living situations, group homes primarily, where the mentally challenged and mentally ill would live in safe, but less restrictive homes and become part of the community at large.

  Like many utopian ideas, it has crashed on the rocks of reality. The vast numbers of group homes didn’t materialize, the ones that did had problems staying afloat, and their staffing led to the same abuse that besmirched the institutions.

Less anyone think I speak from some lofty moral peak, know this. My first born was profoundly autistic. When he was around three we were advised to place him in an institution and forget him. My ex-wife was involved for years in the needs of the handicapped. The initial draft for the Washington State Education for all Act was written on our dining room table. We were the first officers in the newly created chapter of the National Society for Autistic Children in Seattle. We watched as faculty members of the University of Washington co-opted what we started and turned it into another fund raiser – fuck the parents and children it was created to help and protect.

I should add my son still lives in a quasi-institutional setting. He takes care of himself and his cat, works, has friends and is 95% independent. Along the way, he has experienced many of the pitfalls of the mentally challenged including incarceration.  Within the community he inhabits, he is considered a success. Low bar, that! With that, I’m fiercely proud of him and what he has overcome to be the man he is today.

Institutions can be as good or as bad as the society that creates them, operates them, and funds them. You can say that about other places, nursing

homes, hospitals, prisons and orphanages. The key point is this: When they exist, people have a chance. When they go away, the people who need them don’t go away. They move to the streets. Not just that, but I suspect people are making money off them.

Are there answers? Damned if I know. I don’t know how you put that genie back in that bottle.

Any person of compassion hates to see fellow humans in such situations. Part of that is fear. How many are three direct deposits away from being there themselves? SJW have fodder to berate the rest of us. Politicians can mount their moral high horses. A few sober realists point out much of the world lives in such conditions, if not worse. Various Mother Theresa wannabes flit hither and yon.

So WSF, what is the point? WSF says, “None”. Embrace the suck.