Mental Health Care

I find it appalling that Virginia's mental health care system, ignored for decades, is finally "found lacking" because some nut decided to let loose with a gun.

This has been a problem at least since the early 1980s and most likely was an issue well before then. It is a system-wide failure, not only with commitments, voluntary or involuntary, but with available health care and follow up.

Walk the streets of any city in this state and you'll see the results of the inadequacies. People in tatters roaming downtown, muttering and talking to themselves. People unable to hold jobs because of their mental health. People who may be able to be back in the work force with proper care and treatment.

The articles out now cite concerns about "warehousing" the mentally ill. Which is worse than letting folks die of exposure in the streets how?

Our nursing homes are full of "warehoused" mentally ill elderly people. These are sad and horrific places. I know because I hear them and see them every time I visit my grandmother in Richfield. The only reason they are cared for is because of Medicare and Medicaid. Younger people fall through the cracks because there isn't a government program to care for them.

My main concern with loosening the "imminent danger" standards for commitment lie with people like a few I know who would take advantage of the looser rules. Folks like this would use the looser rules for convenience. As in, wife not behaving properly? Have her declared insane.... that'll end the problem.

I know someone who grew up with this threat. It was lashed toward her (be a good girl or you'll be sent to Staunton was one of her parents' main threats. There used to be a mental health facility up there.)

I have heard adults use this threat with one another, too.

So that would be my worry. That folks who aren't in need of a commitment might somehow end up with one.

But that niggling worry isn't enough for me to say, don't make health care reform. We desperately need mental health care reform (and reform of all health care) in this state, if not the country.

Something must be done. It should have been done decades ago.