Mental Pendulum

Bedlam. The word has lost its terrifying connotations and now often is used to denote a genteel chaos, as the bedlam caused by happy children shouting in a small hallway.

It used to mean a place of stark fear, inhumane treatment, and deepest helplessness on the part of both inmate and keeper. It used to be a mental institution, an insane asylum. We had them in this country too, equally awful. Gradually they started to get a little better, a little cleaner, a little less like prison-but-with-more-torture.

And then we just did away with them. Nearly overnight, the mental institution vanished. The criminally insane went to prison (some of them) and the rest were pretty much put out on the streets. Families were left to deal with their mentally ill relations on their own.

Now the thing about a lot of mental illnesses is that people are sick but their illness makes their thought processes less than ideal. They make the wrong decisions. They have varying degrees of connection to reality. They seem healthy, they look "normal," and they are just not going to do what a mostly rational person would do.

Sometimes that means they call strangers "honey" and sing in the street or wear tin-foil caps. But sometimes it means they turn violent.

We would not dream of letting someone bleed to death without making a move to staunch the flow. We have strict laws about hospitals refusing emergency care. Yet we allow people to wander, unhelped and unhelpable, when the emergency cannot be diagnosed with a stethoscope or fixed with a bandage.

The brain is an organ of mystery, power, and fragility. The mind is a phantom of experience and heredity, an enigma. We know nearly nothing. But surely we know more than enough to at least make an effort to aid if not to heal, and to protect if not to cure?

I do not see us finding a solution to the gun problem any time soon. The gun is too tightly woven into the nation's history and psyche to yield lightly to any reasonable and workable plan of change. I do think perhaps we could do something to alleviate the problems we have brought upon ourselves by finding mental institutions to be abominations but refusing to put anything in their place. We did not end Bedlam. We brought Bedlam upon us all.

We pray, and we must. And we must also act.

Comments

[ckm]

WOW! Oh, my Daughter! You have put eloquently into words the thoughts and deepest feelings many of us have, from vague uneasiness to stark terror at the state our society is in. You have put your astute finger right on one of the worst plagues, caused by our own foolish decisions and those of foolish courts.

But you have also pointed out a more do-able solution to the gun violence that stalks us all: better immediate and effective care for the mentally ill.

I have talked and prayed with people in the hospitals who I know are going to be sent back out on the lonely streets, and will only get into trouble again. From your moth to God's ears, my dear, and to the ears of those who can make it happen.

[zuska]

What a fantastic post!

[Pat]

Now, perhaps, you understand why I'm going into social work. Better to work towards achieving minimal effectiveness on social issues (minimal due to our national funding priorities) than to stand by and do nothing at all.