Here is the important bit...
Because this boy was missed. That moment is now gone, and we as a nation are grieving with the consequences of the failure.
The only move left is for me to ask for help. And that’s exactly what I am doing.
1) The US Congress: Please create better laws to ensure the ticking time bomb is caught before it is too late. Make it much easier for a family to get a potentially dangerous person into mandated treatment. This means less paperwork, too. We need to support parents and mental health professionals.
2) The US Justice Department: It’s time we enacted a Health Law Court. Have doctors serve as judges and streamline legal proceedings for tough medical and psychiatric cases. Go to commongood.org for ideas on how this can be done.
3) Health Insurance Companies: Man up. My main complaint is with you. You make it so hard to keep people in the hospital when they need to be there, and it’s even harder to keep them in intensive outpatient services. Please create protocols for difficult cases and loosen the purse strings for extremely troubled individuals –- before it’s too late.
4) Network TV: Please create some exciting television that is actually educational about mental illness. Or least give us a “Gossip Girl” who takes her medication and sees her psychiatrist regularly. Less stigma, better health.
5) Drug Companies: You are always trying to ply me with coffee and doughnuts. I have trust issues with you. Don’t want anything, thanks.
6) The Hollywood PR Machine: Please find the mental health community a really attractive celebrity to get the US mental health system some money. I am glad that George Clooney and Angelina Jolie are doing so much for Africa, but can we borrow one of them please?
7) High School Students: Tell the popular kids to stop being such dicks to the odd kids or the ones they don’t understand.
8) Community Psychiatry Health Researchers: You have kick-ass and innovative ideas for how to reform the system. Could one of you put on a sequin dress and walk a red carpet please? We need to get you more money.
Me? I will keep trying to do my job. But I want to be better equipped the next time the risk appears before me. Because these young men need help. We all do.
6 comments:
Again. Very well said. My thoughts exactly. There is MUCH that needs to change.
Good stuff. The paperwork to get anything done in this country is ridiculous. On a positive note, I've seen modest improvement at our local high schools with anti-bullying campaigns. Some schools are even doing peer mentor programs for students who have communication disorders. It would be great if school psychologists around the nation would be pro-active with programs like this.
This is a beautiful breakdown of how complex the issue is--yet, in breaking it down, you also show us how doable change can be.
I'm peeved at insurance companies, in particular, too.
Well done, girl.
a well delineated list with practical suggestions. like jocelyn said, complex but not unattainable.
hmmm...the one group that seems to be missing that should be doing the most....
Parents.
Great post! Many people still have attitudes towards mental illness that belong in the times of witch burning.
Insurance companies don't have a clue on this matter.
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