Discussion on Reinstututionalization

I am starting an open discussion discussing among the mentally ill here the topic of reinstitutionalization.

If they could build a town for us to live in, where they stop being overly concerned about whether or not we are a danger to ourselves and others, a town in every nation where it is not dangerous for us to live in, would we accept it?

The reason I ask is simple.

When I was 22, I never even heard of mental illness. Today everyone talks about it thanks to the mass shootings in USA starting mostly in 2007. I was 26 then.

Now I am 39, as of 2020. I never thought this would happen, but I am stuck in an assisted living nursing home.

I came to find out that as we age with mental illness, depending on what you have, almost every time we get booted out of our careers (I was a programmer) with no hope back into the market. The loss of community and the things the community will put us through for having a mental illness (I agree, my voices, hearing God, angels, demons and satan are easy - it’s dealing with people that won’t accept me and hate me that’s hard.) causes family issues too.

The hate that boils up just having mental illness and all the push-back, loss of career, loss of job opportunity, housing discrimination, nowhere to stay, at some point I got discriminated against by everyone, even family.

I wound up at an assisted living nursing home because there was no other place for me out in the free world, and this is not free. I’m locked away in a building here, and it’s boring as hell.

I can’t get an apartment because landlords will not rent to me now that they know I have schizophrenia up front.

I can’t get a job for the same reason - nobody will hire me, let alone at 80k a year like I used to have in my career as a programmer.

I am out of money, and had to take disability - all of us wind up this same way.

Then, these case workers started in. Here in jefferson city, USA - everyone was winding up at this place called the Towers downtown around the federal buildings, not far from the old state prison, and also not far from the state’s non metropolitan area projects. We would be expected to walk everywhere, long distance even for food.

I’m not dumb. At transitional housing, where everyone was ending up due to the combination of homelessness and the hospital stay, they were shipping everyone off to the Towers. It is the only housing available for us unless you are over 55 years of age, then there are other assisted living facilities.

Those Towers wound up evicting almost anyone after a while. You don’t ship off 25 people a year to a renovated old run down hotel unless you also evict 20 people a year, if that said Towers is supposed to last the rest of your life.

What this means is simple:

At some point in our schizophrenic lives, things get so discriminatory that we begin to cycle between homelessness (death - cured), prison (because of homelessness), and the nursing homes.

Why don’t they just build us asylums then, so when we run out of opportunity to live out in the open, we just go there for the remainder?

The open question is simple. I know many of you right now are living free and have it good. But the ones you aren’t hearing from are being driven in and out of prison as their asylum, and in time if you have schizophrenia, this stuff will happen to you, unless you just have a wonderful family and they let you live at home, which is the case for about 1% of us. But for the rest of us, I wish they would just create for us what I call, “crazy town”.

A crazy town where we still get to be free and all, we just can’t leave.

Then they can pamper us with depriving us from all weapons and pointy objects all they want, plus they can force pills down our throats all they desire, so long as we stay in crazy town.

What do you think? They are never going to accept us in society…

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Can you do contract work as a freelancer? My next door neighbour does that and earns a fortune

Then your illness is not a concern to an employer.

If I had that skill I’d do a 6 month contract once a year like he does, and then do what the hell I like for the other 6 months - or until the next lucrative deal comes a long!

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Not a good idea for schizophrenics to live together I think. Not only about violence, but they would also encourage each other’s delusions and hallucinations. We’re better with normies.

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Welcome to the forum. I read your post. Never going to happen. Interesting read though. Personally, I wouldn’t want to live there if such a place existed. I’m happy with my freedom.

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Personally I never experienced discrimination due to my sz. After my diagnosis I worked at about 10 jobs. Issue is that I wasnt able to hold a job for more than a month due to stress and negative symptoms.

I quit all of them on my own except for one where they said I am not working fast enough.

We are accepted thanks to medical science and political reasons. Mainly the development of meds as a treatment for SMI, and politically because ‘care in the community’ is cheaper than giving people life sentences.

I really don’t think you’re fully grasping how bad the asylum system was, and how horrible that would be for anyone in this time to endure.

Needs based support seems to work for the most part - but we’re still cut off from community IMO

In your post you also mention about mass shootings etc. These are very rare in the grand scheme of things, and although the media are quick to accuse our ‘diaspora of mentally ill people’ in your context, we’re actually a sizeable part of the worlds population, and only a handful commit crimes like this.

If your worldview became a reality, I would hang myself.

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I know of farms where mentally disabled do farmwork to their abilty. Its connected with people having drug and alcohol problems. That doesn’t cover the cost of it all, but it helps. Its meaningful work and the farms are in the countryside.

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Yea I also want my freedom and contact with normies so I dont forget what it is to be normal.

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I lived on a therapeutic community farm for people with mental illness. They had a forestry and grounds crew where everyone started, they made maple syrup and cut fire wood. A garden where we grew our vegetables, a bakery and then there was the farm aspect raising cows and pigs mainly as well as fixing the equipment. We built a steel frame auto shop while I was there. I learned how to weld. It had a communal dining hall that had great food. They also operate a roadside breakfast restaurant that’s really good. The staff and volunteers lived on the farm with us. I had a great time there. Of course it wasn’t permanent or I would still live there. It was rediculously expensive for the families of course. It wasn’t free and most there came from upper middle to upper class families.

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The problem is the enormous cost. Our politics thought it is a good idea to save money in mental health. A mental health hospital closed and the homeless suicides and druggies increased. It seems its cheaper to shoot the mentally ill (us) or beat them.

People with severe mental illness get institutionalized in Korea. It’s somehow the norm here.

I don’t see people like me anywhere, and the society blames us for any sort of homicide.

Yes. I am still free to work. However I considered contract work before. Asking me to market and sell myself isn’t a good thing. I was doing contracts in the office anyway, and it was just a non starter.

Maybe I live in a state of bigots, but I don’t think people realize just how many people I just came into contact with that are in dire straights with homelessness and prison. And for those of us there, a town of us would be much better than what they are doing now, which is locking us up and throwing away the keys

I agree. It’s been hell. Though I’d rather have independent living for solely schizophrenics, so I don’t have to be lied about all the time. Personally I think there’s a lot of manipulation going on, so certain people don’t have to deal with a lot of competition. A crazy town with independent living would be great and safer than the real world.

Cost. Cost. Cost. Cost. Cost. (post had to be 15 characters)

I’m in Canada and doing fine. Working full-time. Have disclosed my condition to my employer and it’s not a problem. They make a point of letting me know they value me, not only in words but also through their actions. Your proposition may hold appeal to those in crisis, but has none for me.

Welcome to the community.

:blush:

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In the UK the move from big psychiatric hospitals to care in the community has been a good idea that has been delivered in a poor and shoddy manner. That due to serious underfunding.

It is the norm for a person who is constantly at a 35% level and is chronically, but not acutely,mentally ill, to be given less help and support than a person who operates 80% of the time at 90% level and the rest at an acute level of 20% .

What hasn’t helped for the chronically mentally ill has been the decimation of social care services. Because a person has gone past the stage of florid hallucinations doesn’t mean he or she is coping well and having a reasonable quality of life.

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They have come close to making my group home one due to Covid-19 as we are not allowed visitors and can’t leave except for a short time on a holiday occasionally. However I think the current situation probably justifies it to a great degree as the local hospitals are overrun and they have to do something drastic soon if the vaccine doesn’t produce a miracle.

I read through all of that.

I don’t agree. Mental health is being more widely understood as legitimate means of illness or out of control health condition.

It is not a simple case of “crazy” as you described in the post.

I just recently left a role as a waiter. The manager assured me that he’d be able to help if there was a way he I would accept it.

The idea of community support is very important. As addressed above, in the UK it is being underfunded or poorly funded however for those lucky enough to live in more affluent zones of funding; the model works.

I would move out because that’s how much faith I have in the system to work, but at the same time, you have to be resilient.

I came across a paper which said there is such a thing as mind resilience which is increasingly on the rise as a method of recovery (full recovery) for some people diagnosed with schizophrenia.

The right supports will help render the illness as minimal as say diabetes can be when controlled correctly by medication; that’s my view

Permanently institutionalized? If someone becomes violent or merely delusional or upon being diagnosed? Do they try to help patients get better or just stick them in the hospital for life?