/r/50501 Mirror

This is truly chilling.

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It was a good idea to close the mental institutions of the 60s-80s but that led to people with mental illness getting funneled directly into prisons because that was the plan. Despite the big talk of improved funding for community mental health supports that never materialized but funding for the prison complex blew the fuck up under Reagan and his “privatize everything” nonsense

This is a continuation of that trend. Do not ever trust a politician, regardless of party, to reverse this trend. I have worked in mental health for almost 2 decades and a good portion of that was in taxpayer funded programs - residential treatment, community mental health, homeless shelters, etc. regardless of who controlled the state or federal legislature our budgets were slashed year after year.

As we became collectively numb to mass shootings and clamored for mental health services I worked in outpatient mental health clinic serving Medicaid clients. Staff turnover was extremely high because despite being licensed staff with masters degrees (and the associated student loan debt) we were paid $36/hr as 1099 workers. No benefits, no health insurance, no paid sick time or vacation, no retirement, etc. the paperwork demands working within this system were very high too so it was not uncommon to work an extra 10-20 minutes per session documenting (unpaid), more if a crisis occurred which was more common with the high need population.

And the big thing, which I separate into a new paragraph because I know most people reading this will skim it at best, is that we did not get a rate adjustment from 2008-2023. The same rate for 15 fucking years because Medicaid refused to raise rates. Obama (both terms), Trump, and Biden’s presidency going by without a single penny of a raise. I did not work there this entire period but I know this is the case for a fact.

The homeless shelter I worked at closed down. The residential treatment facility I worked at only operates because of donations and has significantly reduced capacity because a key donor passed away without leaving money to the facility. The psychiatric hospital I used to work at is constantly over capacity and desperately needs renovations (that it needed when I worked there a decade ago and its budget was 20-30% higher). Staff salaries are not just stagnant, in some cases they are going backwards. The entry level job I had in the rtf paid $12/hr in 2009, now it pays $9.75

I have seen clients get funneled into the prison system. It is sometimes because of their behavior but even then while I still hold them accountable for their actions I know with the appropriate supports they would have avoided this fate

America is a failed state. Slavery never ended and mental health reform cannot occur because the prison state is contingent on exploiting the mentally ill for essentially free labor (they technically pay them like $1 a day). I truly hope that this rotten system burns to the ground so that something better can start because I genuinely believe it is beyond repair.

assess Federal resources to determine whether they may be directed toward ensuring, to the extent permitted by law, that detainees with serious mental illness are not released into the public because of a lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals