People absolutely should not be subjected to bankruptcy in order to get adequate health care, but there's an aspect of personal responsibility that needs to be considered.
In NZ we have ACC, ACC is a universal insurance plan that covers injuries only (we don't have universal healthcare) so some dickhead can shatter his knees jumping of the roof of a three story building and be fully covered, but my little cousin with a disintegrating hipbone got no help from the state.
I think we should expand to universal healthcare (no chance), and failing that ACC should not be abolished (no need to throw ambulance chasers and insurance fraud into the mix) but I do think that the state should have the power to recoup the costs in the case of grossly negligent behaviour that leads to predictable outcomes.
Beyond momentary acts of idiocy, there are also lifestyle choices that have a significant impact on the health - for example, my morbidly obese aunty has had damned near every one of her non essential organs removed - I firmly believe that tax payers should not be on the hook for her (or anyone else's) wilful self-neglect.
Because hospitalization takes a lot of expensive resources. The bill has to go somewhere.
> Keeping your people healthy should just be a given.
For the entirety of human history, up to and including this point, it hasn't been.
> How many hundreds of years will it take before universal healthcare is finally accepted as the basic standard of a humane civilization?
Realistically? When they have AI doctors that can treat the plebs for very little cost.
Until then, we're talking about at least 10-15% of GDP of a rich country, which is a massive amount of money. Even places with "universal healthcare" make tradeoffs (e.g. IIRC, healthcare waiting lists for many things are absurdly long in Canada compared to the US).
If someone called 998, then yes, please listen to them. Listen attentively, validate their feelings, but soothe and comfort and reassure them. There are systematic ways to do this and they can get results.
But never ever call 998. Beware if someone offers to do so. Your hospital incarceration will be more traumatic, damaging, and expensive than any other alternative.
Get help before it gets to that point. Seek out good therapists and support groups when you're sane and calm, and stick to your treatment. Do it in-person, face-to-face. There is no substitute.
This is weak enough that it will happen many times for people who are not in a significant risk, but for whom such an intervention can be seriously detrimental to their life. Note that suicidal thoughts are most of the time just thoughts and not acted upon.
If nothing else, it should be made clear to the person calling what risks they are taking. Many people might believe that they have confidentiality and that they can talk freely without risk of consequence.
Many times ordinary people have suicidal thoughts and don't carry out it at all. Subjecting those people to coercive treatments would be extremely harmful as doing so will further traumatize them. And it's also an affront to individual liberty, including the freedom to have negative thoughts. Sometimes such thoughts, if not interfered with by a meddling "nanny state", are an opportunity for growth and recovery.
And this hotline can also be used as yet another means of coercive control by a partner with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, or other personality disorders. Where the partner can threaten to report the victim as suicidal or mentally unstable. Yes that happens, and it's surprisingly common. That's why here in the UK we passed laws against coercive control.
Little did I know, my school had its own psychiatric hospital, which I found myself in: the door locked behind me, I was never told that entering that building might lead to me being committed, I was only interested in outpatient programs. But I didn't get much choice in the matter: after telling my story, I was told that either I "voluntarily" committed, or they would go and get a court order and have me forced to come back within 72 hours. Now if I was at all intelligent, I would've told them to let me go, and I would've gtfo of the state for about a week and gotten a lawyer. But as a young college student I didn't know any better--and I also didn't realize how much money they made off of voluntary patients like myself (my insurance never paid for the say, by the way). Well a week later, after taking medication that didn't work but gave me terrible side-effects and me telling more than enough lies about how I was feeling better, they got me out of there (since its not there job to keep people there forever anyway), and I was on my way. It wasn't so terrible except for the forced medication, the constant threat of being moved essentially to jail in the form of involuntary commitment, and the basic dehumanization you experience.
Though it wasn't so simple: my university decided that I needed to go into an outpatient program or else they wouldn't "approve" me going back to class. That is why I say you should never go to your schools counselors: they will always use it against you. I was forced into an outpatient program, which my insurance also wouldn't pay for (or else I wouldn't be able to go back to school), but thankfully I was able to convince someone in there to move me to a less intensive program. I'd also, by then, stopped taking my medication (and haven't taken a single psychiatric drug since).
Well, long story short at this new program I was getting bullied by one of the members of the staff, but instead of taking my complaint seriously the head of the program (which was quite small) simply ejected me before I could talk to anyone higher up. And from the university's perspective, I was done with my treatment. You think that this would be the end of the story, but the school kept their eye on me for years after; the amount of run-ins I had with the police over supposed alarms about my "mental health" was both horrifying and shocking. Thankfully, I eventually learned just to tell them I wouldn't talk without a lawyer, and they stopped bothering me after. But its very scary feeling like you're being constantly surveilled all the time, and fearing that if you ever talk to the police they'll try to take you in to a psychiatric facility.
Years later and I'm very happy: but not on account of any help from contemporary psychiatric institutions, modern psychology, therapy, or anything (though I did get a therapist who wasn't affiliated with my university), but from my readings. God you couldn't know how much Nietzsche and Freud can help someone like me, but they certainly put me through, and I'd have to guess that as their influence waned in American psychology, so did the quality of treatment--but what can you do when all their readers say that the system is the problem, and it just so happens the functionaries of power control the purses of psych programs! Everything radical, actually life-affirming and helpful was shunted from mental health and the whole thing was turned into some sort of pseudo-scientifical escapade for extracting as much money as possible from a socially dissatisfied population: they made a whole business out of ennui--what else is "positive psychology?"
Anyway I'm on the other side of things and all I can say is this: stay the fuck away from mentally ill people, they will ruin your life and only make you feel worse. Also, get exercise, eat decently, and stay hydrated, that usually helps. And never, ever, trust your run of the mill, CBT practicing psych: they either didn't do very well in med-school and became a psychiatrist; or, they studied psychology because they didn't know what else to do and they ended up practicing. There are people out there that can help, who aren't scam artist or just mindless NPCs; but there aren't a whole lot of them, and its almost impossible to differentiate the good from the bad until you get to the other side of things. I would recommend just doing some reading on your own: read Nietzsche, read Camus, read Kierkegaard (I haven't read him but I hear he is good): there is freedom, joy, and affirmation of life to be discovered here--which is nothing that our current mode of organizing society wants for you!
I could see how a lot of well-meaning people could individually decide that it's better to treat than to ignore, but when you add it all up it becomes a nightmare for the patient.
My primary complaint was in the organizational changes made by the non-profit. The amount of funding increased significantly, and while some of it was spent on non-volunteer responders the majority of the funding was spent on new bureaucrats. With the funding, the amount of external organizations we were answerable increased. I was suddenly scolded for behaviors I had been doing for years before. Things like calls taking longer than fifteen minutes (when we had lines open, and I am talking to a person in crisis), or me failing to collect enough demographic information from distressed individuals. I didn't want to adapt, and they were more than happy to pay someone $12/hr that will follow orders more closely.
There were a lot of great things that came from the 988 transition. For one, cell phone calls are now routed based on the location of the cell phone, where previous they were routed by the area code of the cellphone number. Another thing, is it did lead to increased call volume. I bet the combination of increased calls, with all calls routing to centers familiar with local resources, drastically increased the amount of detentions coming from suicide hotlines.
There was a core of highly skilled volunteers that is now entirely gone over the last 2 years. She still volunteers because she wants to be there if a teen calls.
This is emotionally draining work when done right and it shouldn’t be done full time by 20 year olds.
I've commented here about my efforts to extract my friend from her psychiatric misdiagnosis. tl/dr: she has the genetic condition where she can't turn the food fortification folic acid into a methylated form of Vitamin B-9 (MTHFR), which results in her being harmed by fortified food. Folate-deficiency is known to be behind problematic alcohol consumption.
She told me about how adding L-Methyl-Folate to her routine was like flipping a switch from 'depressed' to 'not-depressed'. But the doctors had already decided her substance-associated psychosis required tranquilizers ('antipsychotics') in perpetuity, and only added the vitamin to their forced prescriptions. The latest news is that she escaped from her court-ordered guardian and involuntary mental health treatments, sometime in February 2023. The antipsychotics have worn off, and she's been able to stay sober. She sounds like she's doing well.
Mad in America has published two of my blog posts. The second one was called Cargo Cult Psychiatry: https://www.madinamerica.com/2022/06/cargo-cult-psychiatry/
SCOTUS dismissed my latest petition without comment, as if to say it's perfectly fine for the mental health industry to perpetrate fraud on the United States Court. Still thinking about how to proceed.
A book - Brain Energy by Chris Palmer - was published in 2022. All the old approaches to forced psychiatric drugging have been obsolete for decades, now they're indefensible. There's nothing new in the book, Dr. Palmer just compiled 50+ years of research into his book.
Try to find someone very powerful, or very rich, who has a son or a daughter with the same disease. Then convince that person to spend some energy in public awareness and lobbying.
Other than that, drink a lot of patience. Making too much noise can get you in trouble.
Someone explained this to me once, in another way: "missionaries get eaten by cannibals." Thanks for the reminder.
How many suicides were prevented?
How many people were saved from harm by another person?
Has general mental health improved?
People involuntarily detained is a negative result, but it’s not the only important one.
Given that involuntary detention increases the risk of suicide, this caused suicides rather than prevent them. Especially by using deception to involuntarily detain someone, which is known to have a devastating effect. So a negative number.
https://www.madinamerica.com/2019/06/involuntary-hospitaliza...
In general it is the amount of psychiatric help a person gets, not their problems, that predicts the odds of a successful suicide.
This even applies to children.
And yes, the corollary does apply: refusing help does reduce the risk significantly.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/1023455/
Suicide prevention is about reducing the risk for others, specifically the psychiatry industry (but also school, work, government, ...). Not about reducing the risk for the victims or their families. It is about hiding the problem of suicide, not about actually preventing it or helping families. And sure, not because they don't want to help, but because they can't, due to a combination of not knowing how, not caring, and help needed (e.g. housing) not being available.
> How many people were saved from harm by another person?
This is not 911, is this even an option? I suppose I don't know.
> Has general mental health improved?
No it's gotten worse.
https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/news-releases/americans...
