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> Most psych facilities are over-enrolled and have no interest in keeping people around once they're stable enough to be released. Having personally had family
by artificialLimbs 6y ago
> Most psych facilities are over-enrolled and have no interest in keeping people around once they're stable enough to be released.
Having personally had family members and friends in such places, I can tell you this is false. It has often been the case they are 'magically' healed and capable when the insurance money runs dry.
- kelnos 6y agoWhile your anecdote is incredibly sad and messed up, it does not invalidate the parent's belief that most psych facilities are not like that.
- judahmeek 6y agoYou mean that one anecdote does not invalidate another?
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoit's true that one anecdote does not invalidate another, but assuming truthfulness of both anecdotes the first anecdote seems more wide ranging and likely to give a better view of problems in the system.
- nojster 6y agoThen I could counter argue with another anecdote that I visited thousands of such facilities and in all of them cases of magic healing once the insurance money dried up happened. Merely extending the scope of an anecdote does not change the fact that it is an anecdote and does not provide greater power to convince.
- tmpz22 6y agoThe original comment claimed to be an EMT. That makes their comment a professional experience or professional opinion where as yours is an anecdote.
- dingoegret 6y agoProfessional experience? Inventing new speak for anecdotes on the fly, bravo.
- ALittleLight 6y agoHow is that the case? The first anecdote is someone with only glancing knowledge of the people taken to the mental health facility. They pick them up, probably on a very bad day, and drop them off without seeing evidence of wrongdoing. What evidence would they see? A mustachioed doctor twirling his mustache and laughing maniacally? By contrast, the other anecdote has intimate knowledge of an individual affected by the system for the course of their involvement with it. I don't think either anecdote is compelling, but I do think it is wrong to weigh one as greater than the other.
- warent 6y agoThis is fundamentally the problem of anecdotes and why objective data is needed to resolve these circular arguments
- fellow_human 6y agoNot to mention the fact that neither comment says which country or region they're based in. I suspect these things can vary a lot by geography, yet both are making very generalized statements.
- afarrell 6y ago> objective data A single anecdote is an existence proof. (or a lie or misunderstanding)
- sokoloff 6y agoTrue. Further complicating matters, I believe there is a correlation between misunderstanding and willingness to share anecdotes (across the general population, not specific to this thread).
- docmars 6y agoWhich may be indicative there is not enough data available to support a conclusion, so a person operates with the information most available to them, which may count as a contribution to that data ultimately.
- afarrell 6y agoThe existence of houses which are not fire does not mean the risk of house fires is unworthy of consideration.
- bluntfang 6y agoI think it's more along the lines of one anecdote doesn't invalidate Occam's razor, and the Occam's razor in this scenario is that psych facilities are acting in good faith.
- rriepe 6y agoIt does highlight a perverse incentive that's everywhere within the system. It was useful to me.
- katbyte 6y agoIt also sounds like a very much American problem due to American healthcare..
- djbebs 6y agoIts not unique to the US. Just a few years ago a high profile case happened in portugal where a man had a dispute with his parents and was forcibly committed for 2 years without the doctor his parents went to ever seeing him.
- rjtavares 6y agoThat's not really an example of the issue mentioned: > "Having known several friends who got committed and held against their will in psych wards when there was no good reason to, because their insurance was good, this is an issue." This is pretty much specific to the US (in developed countries). It would be impossible in Portugal. Basically, the only advantage of American healthcare is that if pays for innovation better than others. The world benefits from it, Americans suffer due to it. As long as they're happy, good for them.
- sokoloff 6y agoIf the government is paying the facility to continue holding/treating the “patient”, I don’t see how it’s in any meaningful way different nor impossible in Portugal.
- bluGill 6y agoThe way the fraud works is different. In the US it is their insurance is good, keep them in. In Portugal everyone has the same insurance so it is keep our faucility as full as possible, only releasing just enough people to make it appear like we are doing something. I have no idea what fraud occurs. In either system. I know enough humans to know that some are honest and some are not. Thus if it is possible to get away with fraud odds are someone is.
- mlang23 6y agoanecdote vs belief, wonderful... If I have to choose, I would pick anecdote over someones personal believes everytime!
- orbifold 6y agoThere is plenty of evidence of inhumane treatment in psych facilities over decades, including human experimentation, drug trials, debilitating brain surgeries, electroshock therapy etc. Psychiatry is probably the single medical field that has caused more harm than it has cured.
- woko 6y agoJust to be clear, electroshock therapy is still a thing.
- paulydavis 6y agoIt also can be a long term cure more severe drug resistant depression. It worked for my wife. They do not do it without your consent.
- orbifold 6y agoYes I know and there are some people in permanent psychiatric care without any perspective for improvement with current known methods, some are kept almost like animals or permanently sedated.
- cutemonster 6y agoWhen you write "anecdote" it seems you also didn't read the linked buzzfeednews article. There's statistics in there, but it's quite long so I understand if most people won't read it
- GavinMcG 6y agoTo the extent that our experiences differ, I'd bet that things resolve in my favor for these cases. In other words, the vast vast majority of encounters that this article describes are ones involving people with very low incomes or without housing (68% of calls were in this category) rather than people who have private insurance.
- scythe 6y agoIt does seem like a bit of a contradiction to use a market-based Homo economicus model of patient qua consumer behavior to motivate the widespread use of private insurance for the same individuals who are supposed to be institutionalized because they can't care for themselves! Single-payer may not always be the best model but at least it avoids this particular absurdity — of course Medicaid wouldn't stand for this. Of course, when you absolutely need indefinite care, the situation changes and you get our monstrous nursing home ecosystem.
- bluGill 6y agoWhile those are the types of people most likely as a group to commit crimes, that doesn't means any individual does. Many of them are harmless, and know how to survive, and even take pride in their independence. While I'm sure it is in your favor, if those who are harmless are taken off the street in addition to those who are harmful overall it is a loss.
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- wruza 6y agoYour experiences may be not contradicting each other. These facilities may release both healthy-enough people and those people whose insurance ran dry (i.e. underhealing them). But it doesn’t mean that they forcefully detain healthy ones until their insurance ends.
- EliRivers 6y agoAye. Sick people who have no funding for their treatment get released.
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