As part of my job I often do court-appointed Guardian-Ad-Litem work, which typically consists of visiting and interviewing the proposed ward and all the parties, assessing the ward's condition and seeing if a guardianship and/or conservatorship is warranted and making sure the proposed guardian or conservator is appropriate and has the best interests of the ward first and foremost in their plans and actions.
Today got a bit more sporty than usual.
I was assigned to be the GAL for a black female with schizoaffective disorder.
On speaking with the lady therapist from Community Mental Health who was responsible for the petition, I found out said person had been known to wander about Detroit, Royal Oak Township, and Pontiac and there was a small matter of multiple police interactions and a matter building fire that she may have set. Oh fun.
Oh, and one other thing I was told - she doesn't like white people.
Fortuitously, she had a doctor appointment at Community Mental Health so I was able to visit her there. She was led in by the group home administrator where she's currently staying and was rather resistant to entering the building.
It was pretty clear she was having a full-blown break from reality.
She initially didn't want to accept he paperwork that she's required to be served with but the group home administrator got her calmed down enough so that we could "talk" in a conference room with 4 of us present.
Talking consisted of her going off in very delusional monologues and it was pretty clear she didn't comprehend anything I was saying and really didn't want to listen but instead did various monologues with a variety of nutso subjects, including claims that white aliens gave her a frontal lobotomy.
When the her monologue shifted to her wanting to kill white people it did get a little uncomfortable.
That she soon after she said that she bolted from the room knocking the lady therapist aside (who happened to be white) made it kinda sporty. Security did manage to get her under control and she was off to see her doctor there as clearly she's either off her meds or they're not working.
That she needs a guardian and mental health treatment is abundantly clear.
One of the gravest mistakes this country has made is the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill.
Instead of the mentally ill being placed in institutions where they can be protected and treated, they're often out wandering the streets both at risk to themselves and others. This of course leads to crimes both against and by them, and jails acting as our mental institutions. It also results in under-funded and unempowered community mental health organizations trying to cope with the caseload and lack of authority to keep and treat the mentally ill. The current system of dealing with the severely mentally ill is simply not working.
3 comments:
"Instead of the mentally ill being placed in institutions where they can be protected and treated, they're often out wandering the streets both at risk to themselves and others. This of course leads to crimes both against and by them, and jails acting as our mental institutions."
Bullseye!
Malcolm Gladwell wrote a great piece about a mentally ill gentleman named "Murphy". You can add "hospitals" to your list of where the mentally ill get warehoused. In the case of Murphy it was after he had pneumonia from inhaling vomit and frostbite from passing out in the cold. Gladwell figured Murphy racked up a million dollars of medical bills a year.
GREAT post! Thanks for sharing.
Oh, yeah. They are on our streets and church volunteers, few of whom have training in dealing with mental illnesses get to try to deal with them.
Liberals fought long and hard to "free" the mentally ill fr hospitals..and now the next generation of liberals blames it all on Reagan closing the mental hospitals. Revisionist history 101.
And in my EMS days, we had a number of regular street person patients in the Million Dollar Club because they got transported to a hospital for no real reason once or twice a day for years--decades even. And the taxpayers just eat it. I still remember some of them: Rufus Turner, Janice Barnes, Thomas McClive...all dead now but unforgettable due to the number of times we had to pick them up and take them in for free.
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