--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Colin, I agree with much you said. I work in a > mental health center. I have > seen so many people walk through the door who see > themselves as only a label. > They also believe or have been lead to believe that > drugs are the only > answer. Never mind they don't have friends or > family, or a decent place to > live, or a car etc. The loneliness and isolation I > see is devastating. ...
> I think it's very hard for a person with bipolar or > other illness to know > what to do. I recently asked a clinican,"What > percentage of your practice is > loneliness?" She said, "50-70percent. Not that some > don't have something > wrong, but if someone cared about them, most would > be alright." Most of my > job focuses on people's loneliness and isolation, > and poverty. there is no > pill for that-although I can imagine the drug > companies trying to market a > pill that way. I agree with this as well. If you had a good look at the people filling the wards of the publicly funded psychiatric hospitals, I'm sure you'd find the majority are from low-income backgrounds and people with no families. It's a lot easier to pump these people full of drugs and warehouse them than to take the time to help them find meaning in their lives. Then, of course, once they're full of drugs and as long as they're not violent, out they go again because otherwise it costs the taxpayers too much money to provide for them. So they end up living in the streets, going off their meds, and back into the psych hospital again in a vicious cycle. There seemed to be a trend in the 50s and 60s, (certainly in the US, based on the books and movies made about this), of putting upper- and middle-class kids who were acting out into fancy psychiatric hospitals. Maybe this was a form of daycare for teenaged children of wealthy people who didn't know how, or didn't want, to deal with adolescent angst in any other way. Send 'em for therapy, give 'em drugs and wait a few years until they see the light; in other words, send them away until they've gone through puberty - boarding school, psych hospital, whatever, just get them out of the way until they grow up (?) NP - My dog panting like a fiend - probably needs to go out. P.S. Maureen, try to remember the njc in the subject line or someone who is a joni-only will come after you. ===== Catherine Toronto ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
