I’ve seen it on both sides. My mother was cut out by her sister with paranoid schizophrenia. I cut out my father and step mother (see my other comment for detai

I’ve seen it on both sides. My mother was cut out by her sister with paranoid schizophrenia. I cut out my father and step mother (see my other comment for details) due to alcohol abuse. I will say that never once was it “the governments problem” to deal with them. That wasn’t part of the calculus, and in fact the laws in Ohio were the biggest barrier to us getting them help. Despite being unable to walk and feed himself because he drank so heavily, the state wouldn’t grant me guardianship and said it was his choice to drink himself to death. If the implication is that families need to be responsible for one another, we need to make it easier for children to attain guardianship over health decisions when their parents stop adequately taking care of themselves. Otherwise you’re throwing a burden on children without any legal authority, so you just end up in a constant high stress situation where you’re trying to convince someone to do something that their brain is incorrectly telling them to be skeptical of and ignore.