Re:Profiles of people living in homeless encampments, rarely...
by gamblor956 on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @02:49PM
(#31586365)
I have also worked with the homeless.
Involuntary treatment, whether physically forced or coerced by denying certain benefits, almost never has successful outcomes. Why would it? Recovery is an active process that cannot be forced onto someone.
Absolutely false. It has worked 100% of the time I have seen it forced upon my clients (in every case because as their legal guardian I made that decision for them).
Every single one of my clients was happy that they were forced into treatment. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Because they didn't want to be mentally ill, but when their illness surfaced they couldn't make the decision to take their medications or go in for treatment. And the addicts abjectly refused to voluntarily get treatment because they were absolutely terrified of the effects of withdrawal, which in almost every case required hospital settings to manage.
But once they were sane/sober again, they were glad that I made the decision for them, because they absolutely preferred sanity and sobriety over the alternatives but couldn't get their on their own.
Housing first isn't a magical spell, it just works better, at a lower cost, with less authoritarianism than the alternatives.
This is false. LA County spends many multiples on its housing first strategy than it does when it simply commits someone to a mental hospital. Not surprisingly, mental hospitals are cheaper and more effective than housing first.
And critically, you ignore a very crucial thing about your housing first mantra: it only works for those individuals whose addictions or mental illnesses are mild enough that they can handle their own rehabilitation or medication, or in other words, a very small minority of the mentally ill and homeless in LA County.
It's very cavalier of you to suggest other people's human rights are "theoretical concerns".
When someone is so far gone that they're shitting themselves in the middle of a busy downtown street, their "human rights" are purely theoretical given the likelihood that they will die very shortly.
Thank goodness for people like me who ignore the theoretical human rights concerns so that these homeless/addicts can get the treatment they need and actually survive long enough, and be sober/sane enough, for their human rights to actually matter to them.
Involuntary treatment, whether physically forced or coerced by denying certain benefits, almost never has successful outcomes. Why would it? Recovery is an active process that cannot be forced onto someone.
Absolutely false. It has worked 100% of the time I have seen it forced upon my clients (in every case because as their legal guardian I made that decision for them).
Every single one of my clients was happy that they were forced into treatment. EVERY SINGLE ONE. Because they didn't want to be mentally ill, but when their illness surfaced they couldn't make the decision to take their medications or go in for treatment. And the addicts abjectly refused to voluntarily get treatment because they were absolutely terrified of the effects of withdrawal, which in almost every case required hospital settings to manage.
But once they were sane/sober again, they were glad that I made the decision for them, because they absolutely preferred sanity and sobriety over the alternatives but couldn't get their on their own.
Housing first isn't a magical spell, it just works better, at a lower cost, with less authoritarianism than the alternatives.
This is false. LA County spends many multiples on its housing first strategy than it does when it simply commits someone to a mental hospital. Not surprisingly, mental hospitals are cheaper and more effective than housing first.
And critically, you ignore a very crucial thing about your housing first mantra: it only works for those individuals whose addictions or mental illnesses are mild enough that they can handle their own rehabilitation or medication, or in other words, a very small minority of the mentally ill and homeless in LA County.
It's very cavalier of you to suggest other people's human rights are "theoretical concerns".
When someone is so far gone that they're shitting themselves in the middle of a busy downtown street, their "human rights" are purely theoretical given the likelihood that they will die very shortly.
Thank goodness for people like me who ignore the theoretical human rights concerns so that these homeless/addicts can get the treatment they need and actually survive long enough, and be sober/sane enough, for their human rights to actually matter to them.