4 ms·

Guy was clearly unstable and in over his head. Not against the law mind you, but his mental health was deteriorating (by his own mothers admission) and he began

by fyirt 11y ago

Guy was clearly unstable and in over his head. Not against the law mind you, but his mental health was deteriorating (by his own mothers admission) and he began threatening FBI agents. The 14 months in prison without due process could have been expanded on more in the article, there was next to no info regarding that situation which leaves the reader with a fair few unanswered questions.

tptacek 11y ago
What's there to say? Involuntary mental health commitment in the US is a disaster. The doctors operating state-run mental health prisons are overworked and underqualified. And, if you've had run-ins with the doctors operating private mental health hospitals, you know that's saying something! Lopez was apparently armed and, from the picture painted in this article, pretty much unhinged. Something needed to be done. But the only "something" the criminal justice system has in its bag of things is, by pretty much all accounts everywhere, a total debacle. Are things better in other countries? Who's doing this well? What does Norway do?
- zymhan 11y ago
  There is next to no funding in the US for public mental health. We no longer have aslyums, because those were awful infringements on people's rights, regardless of whether or not they're sane. But we never replaced those centralized mental institutions with the community psych care that was necessary to make up for the gap. So now many of those same people live on the streets and/or in and out of jail and hospitals because of a lack of long-term support.
  - torpfactory 11y ago
    My wife works as a nurse in the Emergency Department of a hospital in Washington state, which has a shortage of mental health hospital beds available for patients. They are forced to board these patients in the Emergency Room for days at a time. The rooms often have no windows and are not set up for long term care. If the patient wasn't crazy before coming in, they will be by the time they leave. The stories she has make my engineering job look like some kind of kindergrten. Patients trying to eat their own feces, trying to hurt staff members. Just remember techie folks that there is a whole other world out there where very bad and difficult things do happen.
    - themartorana 11y ago
      And they're all exacerbated by the broken political machine the US has become. (Not that this is exclusive to the US.) I will never understand how the right wing in this country has become so detached from helping people that actually need it. It's certainly un-Christian, but put that powder-keg aside for a second and it's bad for property values and businesses and communities and tourism and everything that creates more wealth when the least of us aren't cared for.
- tinco 11y ago
  In The Netherlands I imagine it would go like this: He would annoy the AIVD (or RIVD?), at some point possibly breaking a law (the threat). The AIVD isn't authorised to arrest I think, so they would make a complaint and a police officer would come to his door, interrogate him, recognise the mental health issues and send a note to his physician. The physician would call the guy and try to get him into a voluntary institution or at least to see some kind of therapist on a weekly basis. Let's say the guy is unreceptive to his. Next step is that a social worker in his neighbourhood (this is a new system called wijkteam) is assigned to him that will visit his residence once a week. The worker will knock on his door and try to connect and build trust, family and friends are encouraged to participate in this process. If the guy screws up too bad though, and the police gets involved another time or two the physician will be asked to authorise an involuntary treatment and he would end up in an institution of which would be much like a rich state in the US (NY, CA) one I think. Note that nowhere in this process there would be a solitary confinement or separation from his family. That might happen in the NL but I can't imagine it would ever happen for more than a few days.
  - tptacek 11y ago
    NY and CA state-run mental hospitals are deeply unpleasant and staffed with overworked, underqualified doctors who have caseloads consisting of the very most difficult patients in numbers that would overwhelm private-practice doctors even if they were just teenagers with mild eating disorders. Is that the case in the Netherlands as well? (For whatever it's worth: the NYT piece doesn't say Lopez was ever held in solitary, or that he was denied visitation by his family --- but solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem and a legit contrast to draw with the Netherlands).
    - ryanlol 11y ago
      > solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem Not really, it's a problem in Europe too. We just don't talk about it. If you get arrested here in Finland, you'll by default be in solitary and will remain so until the cops, not the courts, feel like letting you out.
allisthemoist 11y ago
> “Any attempt to arrest me will be treated as a hostile act,” he wrote to Mr. Reising. By then, agents had been informed by the Delaware State Police that Mr. Lopez’s mother, Joyce Lopez, had told them that her son had a shotgun and was in a “poor mental state.”

by fyirt 11y ago

tptacek 11y ago

What's there to say? Involuntary mental health commitment in the US is a disaster. The doctors operating state-run mental health prisons are overworked and underqualified. And, if you've had run-ins with the doctors operating private mental health hospitals, you know that's saying something! Lopez was apparently armed and, from the picture painted in this article, pretty much unhinged. Something needed to be done. But the only "something" the criminal justice system has in its bag of things is, by pretty much all accounts everywhere, a total debacle. Are things better in other countries? Who's doing this well? What does Norway do?

zymhan 11y ago
There is next to no funding in the US for public mental health. We no longer have aslyums, because those were awful infringements on people's rights, regardless of whether or not they're sane. But we never replaced those centralized mental institutions with the community psych care that was necessary to make up for the gap. So now many of those same people live on the streets and/or in and out of jail and hospitals because of a lack of long-term support.
- torpfactory 11y ago
  My wife works as a nurse in the Emergency Department of a hospital in Washington state, which has a shortage of mental health hospital beds available for patients. They are forced to board these patients in the Emergency Room for days at a time. The rooms often have no windows and are not set up for long term care. If the patient wasn't crazy before coming in, they will be by the time they leave. The stories she has make my engineering job look like some kind of kindergrten. Patients trying to eat their own feces, trying to hurt staff members. Just remember techie folks that there is a whole other world out there where very bad and difficult things do happen.
  - themartorana 11y ago
    And they're all exacerbated by the broken political machine the US has become. (Not that this is exclusive to the US.) I will never understand how the right wing in this country has become so detached from helping people that actually need it. It's certainly un-Christian, but put that powder-keg aside for a second and it's bad for property values and businesses and communities and tourism and everything that creates more wealth when the least of us aren't cared for.
tinco 11y ago
In The Netherlands I imagine it would go like this: He would annoy the AIVD (or RIVD?), at some point possibly breaking a law (the threat). The AIVD isn't authorised to arrest I think, so they would make a complaint and a police officer would come to his door, interrogate him, recognise the mental health issues and send a note to his physician. The physician would call the guy and try to get him into a voluntary institution or at least to see some kind of therapist on a weekly basis. Let's say the guy is unreceptive to his. Next step is that a social worker in his neighbourhood (this is a new system called wijkteam) is assigned to him that will visit his residence once a week. The worker will knock on his door and try to connect and build trust, family and friends are encouraged to participate in this process. If the guy screws up too bad though, and the police gets involved another time or two the physician will be asked to authorise an involuntary treatment and he would end up in an institution of which would be much like a rich state in the US (NY, CA) one I think. Note that nowhere in this process there would be a solitary confinement or separation from his family. That might happen in the NL but I can't imagine it would ever happen for more than a few days.
- tptacek 11y ago
  NY and CA state-run mental hospitals are deeply unpleasant and staffed with overworked, underqualified doctors who have caseloads consisting of the very most difficult patients in numbers that would overwhelm private-practice doctors even if they were just teenagers with mild eating disorders. Is that the case in the Netherlands as well? (For whatever it's worth: the NYT piece doesn't say Lopez was ever held in solitary, or that he was denied visitation by his family --- but solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem and a legit contrast to draw with the Netherlands).
  - ryanlol 11y ago
    > solitary confinement is a distinctive US problem Not really, it's a problem in Europe too. We just don't talk about it. If you get arrested here in Finland, you'll by default be in solitary and will remain so until the cops, not the courts, feel like letting you out.

allisthemoist 11y ago

> “Any attempt to arrest me will be treated as a hostile act,” he wrote to Mr. Reising. By then, agents had been informed by the Delaware State Police that Mr. Lopez’s mother, Joyce Lopez, had told them that her son had a shotgun and was in a “poor mental state.”