Institutions don’t work…all I think about with institutions are places like Pennhurst Asylum. By the mid-1960s, Pennhurst had been open for fifty years. It housed 2,791 people, most of them children, which was about 900 more than the administration thought the buildings could comfortably accommodate.
But as a state school, they had to take what they were given. Only 200 of the residents were in any kind of art, education, or recreation programs that would help to improve their condition, though many of the patients were high-functioning enough to improve with the right care. . By the 1980’s, overcrowding, lack of funds, inadequate staffing and decades of abuse and neglect accusations caught up with the operation, and in 1987 Pennhurst closed its doors. Its death was not without positive impact, though. The martyrdom of its long suffering patients helped put into motion changes to medical practice across the country and to society as a whole.
Many other of these so called “institutions” ran the same way, the only difference was a reporter named Bill Baldini ran five-episode exposé of this particular Asylum. To me, all asylums fall into this pattern of overwhelmed doctors/nurses not adequately trained to deal with the mentally ill and end up abusing them in some way or another…and most get away with it, because who is going to believe the patient if they’re deemed “mentally ill” over a trained professional?
I think more focus needs to be put on school safety, I went to an inner-city high school we had metal detectors and they searched our bags as we came through the front door. Confiscating anything that wasn’t “school appropriate.” Sure, fights happened and bullying and whatever, it was high school…but no one brought guns into the building. I don’t even remember any other weapons being brought in…the only thing I think the school missed on some drugs being smuggled in but nothing is fool proof.
Metal detectors, and safer gun laws need to be implemented not the return of these so called Asylums. Think about yes, we have the second amendment right in our country of America…but that law was written during a time of civil war and the threat of war from Europe. I think it needs to be revised for the 21st century. Not completely eliminated because I think there are responsible gun owners out there, but it needs to be harder to get a gun. And I think just like needing your licenses renewed every so often gun owners and family’s should be mentally evaluated to make sure they are no a threat with weapons.
I do think those automatic bump stocks should be illegal for regular non military people…but something needs to change, and its not the re-implementation of mental institutions.
