On 2018-10-19 1:00 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
> On 10/19/2018 11:58 AM, Nancy Young wrote:
>> On 10/19/2018 11:30 AM, Dave Smith wrote:
>
>>> Then everybody dumps on the police for not being well enough trained
>>> to deal with mental health issues.Â* Well, they are cops, not mental
>>> health workers.Â* The victims family, friends, social workers and
>>> mental health workers failed them before the police did.
>>
>> I don't know how much you can do about the mentally ill, you can't
>> just lock them up or force feed them medication.
>>
>> nancy
>
> They did years ago.Â* Not sure of the time period but around 1980 they
> were really closing down the mental hospitals.Â* I'm not sure if it was
> more harsh locking them up or making them homeless.Â* Sad situation
> either way.Â* Mental illness is not looked upon kindly in our society.

It was about that time when they did the same year. Many of the
clientele went from being patients to being homeless. It is hard enough
to get someone in a crisis to be hospitalized and they keep them for
only 72 hours. The city near us had two suicides off the same bridge
over 6 days. The first one was a 19 year old who had been in the
psychiatric wing of the local hospital under suicide watch. They
released him and he went directly from the hospital to the bridge and
jumped.

Of course there had to be a big investigation by the SIU because there
was a police officer present. He had been responding to a call about a
guy on the bridge and I guess things didn't work out as well as the arm
chair psychiatrists expected so they had to make sure the cop didn't do
the wrong thing. It ****es me off that they would put the cop through
that probe but no one is asking how a person on suicide watch can end up
dead a half hour after being released from the psych ward.