Again, things are going to vary from one place or a person to another and I’m afraid there probably isn’t a simple, satisfying, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s a lot of room for improvement at basically every level with mental healthcare, though it’s pretty hard to pick one or even a couple things and say “do this one thing differently and things will be better” because each of those one little things tends to lead straight down a rabbit hole of 10,000 other things that would also need to change for it to work.
Some very broad categories of things I’d like to see improved
More funding, resources, training, etc. there’s only so many psych hospitals, so many beds, doctors, nurses, etc. so even if we could somehow funnel everyone who really needs treatment down a path towards getting it, there’s really no way for them all to get it. We need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to access high quality mental healthcare.
A whole lot of education, public awareness, societal changes, etc. need to happen. There’s still a whole lot of stigma and taboos about mental health issues and treatment. People don’t know what’s involved, are afraid of getting branded as crazy, don’t know what resources are available to them, how to access them, what their strengths and limitations are, they can’t afford it, a long stay in a psych hospital may mean losing their jobs or their home. Damn near every night I get a call for a domestic where I hear one of the parties yelling at the other that they’re going to get them committed, and often there’s no real sign that anyone involved actually has any kind of mental health issue, they’re mostly just idiots or assholes, so it’s usually an empty threat and paints the picture of treatment being some sort of punishment or a weapon to use against someone, and that sort of thinking really damages the reputation and efficacy of mental healthcare.
There probably need to be new categories of healthcare created, or if they do already actually exist, they need to be expanded. I can’t tell you how many calls I get a night from people who clearly have some kind of psych issues, but wouldn’t meet the bar of being a danger by any reasonable definition. I could probably rattle off a dozen names and addresses off the top of my head of people that I speak to almost every shift who probably really need to be in a psych hospital for a while to get themselves straightened out, but since they’re in no way dangerous, our hands are kind of tied, and the best we can do is offer them a mental health crisis line they can speak to, or send a cop out to check on them, make sure they’re ok, maybe talk to them for a while or leave them some pamphlets or business cards or something for resources they can try and hope they take the next step themselves, or at the very least tell them to stop calling 911 (which doesn’t really have any teeth, no one really wants to go through the paperwork and court hearings and such to get them in trouble for abusing the 911 system, I’ve only heard of it actually happening once in these kinds of cases in the 5 years I’ve been working here, and in their minds they’re calling about an actual emergency, and we don’t want to discourage them from calling if/when there actually is something going on, it’s happened before that they’ve actually called in a real incident) so there needs to be some sort of middle ground between hauling them off kicking and screaming to be committed and just making suggestions and hoping they follow through with them, and I don’t really know what that middle ground is.
Again, things are going to vary from one place or a person to another and I’m afraid there probably isn’t a simple, satisfying, one-size-fits-all answer to that question. There’s a lot of room for improvement at basically every level with mental healthcare, though it’s pretty hard to pick one or even a couple things and say “do this one thing differently and things will be better” because each of those one little things tends to lead straight down a rabbit hole of 10,000 other things that would also need to change for it to work.
Some very broad categories of things I’d like to see improved
More funding, resources, training, etc. there’s only so many psych hospitals, so many beds, doctors, nurses, etc. so even if we could somehow funnel everyone who really needs treatment down a path towards getting it, there’s really no way for them all to get it. We need to make sure that everyone who needs it is able to access high quality mental healthcare.
A whole lot of education, public awareness, societal changes, etc. need to happen. There’s still a whole lot of stigma and taboos about mental health issues and treatment. People don’t know what’s involved, are afraid of getting branded as crazy, don’t know what resources are available to them, how to access them, what their strengths and limitations are, they can’t afford it, a long stay in a psych hospital may mean losing their jobs or their home. Damn near every night I get a call for a domestic where I hear one of the parties yelling at the other that they’re going to get them committed, and often there’s no real sign that anyone involved actually has any kind of mental health issue, they’re mostly just idiots or assholes, so it’s usually an empty threat and paints the picture of treatment being some sort of punishment or a weapon to use against someone, and that sort of thinking really damages the reputation and efficacy of mental healthcare.
There probably need to be new categories of healthcare created, or if they do already actually exist, they need to be expanded. I can’t tell you how many calls I get a night from people who clearly have some kind of psych issues, but wouldn’t meet the bar of being a danger by any reasonable definition. I could probably rattle off a dozen names and addresses off the top of my head of people that I speak to almost every shift who probably really need to be in a psych hospital for a while to get themselves straightened out, but since they’re in no way dangerous, our hands are kind of tied, and the best we can do is offer them a mental health crisis line they can speak to, or send a cop out to check on them, make sure they’re ok, maybe talk to them for a while or leave them some pamphlets or business cards or something for resources they can try and hope they take the next step themselves, or at the very least tell them to stop calling 911 (which doesn’t really have any teeth, no one really wants to go through the paperwork and court hearings and such to get them in trouble for abusing the 911 system, I’ve only heard of it actually happening once in these kinds of cases in the 5 years I’ve been working here, and in their minds they’re calling about an actual emergency, and we don’t want to discourage them from calling if/when there actually is something going on, it’s happened before that they’ve actually called in a real incident) so there needs to be some sort of middle ground between hauling them off kicking and screaming to be committed and just making suggestions and hoping they follow through with them, and I don’t really know what that middle ground is.