And it’s really cute how everybody keeps repeating that mental illness is “just like” diabetes in terms of being real illness. Yet it would never occurr to anybody to propose that the treatment of diabetes in college students should be entrusted to their professors who must provide this care for free.
I wish people thought a millimeter beyond their slogans. There is nothing progressive in farming out medical care to unpaid and unqualified laypeople. Suggesting that any passing stranger is qualified to deal with mental disorders destroys the mental health profession.
Clarissa's Blog 
\Suggesting that any passing stranger is qualified to deal with mental disorders destroys the mental health profession.
Ironically, in “Related” section of this post, one sees the title of your past post – “Mental Illness Doesn’t Exist.” 🙂
And what you said works also in the other direction: the mental health profession in America has already been weakened. An article from 1984 “HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN” says:
\THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation’s mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure.
…
Dr. John A. Talbott, president of the American Psychiatric Association, said, ”The psychiatrists involved in the policy making at that time certainly oversold community treatment, and our credibility today is probably damaged because of it.” He said the policies ”were based partly on wishful thinking, partly on the enormousness of the problem and the lack of a silver bullet to resolve it, then as now.”
Based on some American bloggers, I understood that this state continues to this day. From wiki:
\As hospitalization costs increased, both the federal and state governments were motivated to find less expensive alternatives to hospitalization. The 1965 amendments to Social Security shifted about 50% of the mental health care costs from states to the federal government, motivating the government to promote deinstitutionalization.
The increase in homelessness was seen as related to deinstitutionalization. Studies from the late 1980s indicated that one-third to one-half of homeless people had severe psychiatric disorders, often co-occurring with substance abuse.
A process of indirect cost-shifting may have led to a form of “re-institutionalization” through the increased use of jail detention for those with mental disorders deemed unmanageable and noncompliant. When laws were enacted requiring communities to take more responsibility for mental health care, necessary funding was often absent, and jail became the default option, being cheaper than psychiatric care.
In summer 2009, author and columnist Heather Mac Donald stated in City Journal, “jails have become society’s primary mental institutions, though few have the funding or expertise to carry out that role properly… at Rikers, 28 percent of the inmates require mental health services, a number that rises each year.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation#United_States
LikeLike
Of course, absolutely, real mental health care has been dismantled to aid drug pushers to make profits. But that doesn’t make professors or other laypeople to treat sick people.
LikeLike
Well … the truth is that doctors don’t really treat diabetes either.
Doctors simply medicate their patients through it as a life care pathway.
If these doctors are very fortunate, their patients find a way to remedy fundamental nutrition and environmental problems that lead to excess glucagon production, hopefully leaving their only remaining health issue the fact that they’re undergoing hyperinsulinemia that’s been medically prescribed …
Heard of those people who are “diabetic” but who don’t have to take insulin or pills for it, have normal C-peptide levels, have HbA1c readings in a normal range, and can pass a high glucose challenge test?
There’s a term for such people: non-diabetic.
“But there’s no medicating this sort of crazy away!
The treatments must continue!
There is no cure for this kind of crazy!”
And thus the beatings shall continue until morale improves.
🙂
Actually, you were quite lucky to escape the life care pathway tendencies of the American medical establishment during your adventures into diabetes of the temporary variety …
LikeLike