BLOG ARCHIVE - Dog justice for mentally ill
Four things happened in the 1970s that devastated mental heath care: 1) Acute mental patients were released from mental hospitals in the 1970's without adequate provisions for their subsistence and psychiatric treatment; 2) laws were enacted requiring that patients must prove to be immediate dangers to self or others before being involuntarily committed to mental hospitals; 3) Medicaid insurance was withdrawn for mental hospital inpatients, which led to many hospital closures; and 4) budgets were reduced for outpatient psychiatric care. AIMI members also advocate against capital punishment, excessive sentencing, children being tried and sentenced as adults, wrongful convictions, and prisoner cruelty, but our main focus is removing mental patients from jails and prisons to humane, healing environments where their psychiatric and basic subsistence needs are met under assisted outpatient treatment (AOT) programs if appropriate, or as hospital inpatients if necessary.
For at least four decades, mentally ill people who act inappropriately are criminalized and incarcerated, killed in the streets by police officers and neighborhood hoodlums, or left homeless to die of neglect. The mentally ill comprise over 60% of inmates in torturous solitary confinement, and prisons' tools for enforcement include lengthened sentences, gas and pepper spray, Tasers, and deadly restraint chairs. People with psychiatric challenges experience more discrimination than any other people in America, and it increases when coupled with other triggers for discriminatory treatment, such as blackness or poverty. Please see the mission statement at ASSISTANCE TO THE INCARCERATED MENTALLY ILL for more information at this link http://www.care2.com/c2c/group/aimi .
"Dog Justice for Mentally Ill" reports stories about individuals who are wrongly punished for mental illness, including excessive sentencing, brutality in mental hospitals or prisons, and wrongful deaths that prison investors' cyberstalkers prevent from being reported at our Care2 group. Read and share the articles at Dog Justice for Mentally Ill blog in whole or by using excerpts, as long as you publish a link leading back to Dog Justice blog. We appreciate your help spreading awareness about America's mental health care crisis and its devastating effects on the lives of sick people and their families as well as the general public. All are at risk in a system that reacts to mental illness only after crises.
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