Conservative Disinterest in Funding Mental Health

Pushing Rope friend Ginger Lee has a post on how suicidal and violent people fall through the cracks of our system.

Since there are now apparently quite a few people that are wondering how ‘crazy’ people that snap & do very, very violent things are allowed to walk around among the rest of society, there is a reason why. Mental healthcare in this country sucks. SUCKS.

In emergency rooms & crisis centers all over the country, people that are KNOWN to be either suicidal or completely psychotic are sent home. Some are told to come back ‘once they do something’. You can sit there & beg them to please keep you because you know it is not safe for you to be out in the world at that moment, & they’ll send you packing with what equates to a pat on the head. This is especially true for people without health insurance.

Often it is too late to do something after a suicidal or violent person acts out. Since the Reagan administration, mental health has been cut from the federal and state budgets. People with mental health problems do not have powerful lobbyists to argue on their behalf.

In Florida, Gov. Rick Scott has made drastic cuts to mental health-related programs. Conservatives blame mental health for gun violence and then cut funding for mental health. Freedom isn't mentally dangerous people notgetting mental care and then shooting up a school with an AR-15.