6 ms·

You can blame the schools for misdiagnosing ADHD, and you can blame them for a poor IEP, but you can't blame them for a child not having a normal life due to on

• btilly 14y ago
  His son might not have been contributing, but having him homeless and bouncing in and out of jails is more expensive to society than appropriate institutional support. Furthermore one of the stated issues is his unwillingness to take antipsychotic medication, and one of the characteristic traits is that in a structured jail environment, where he's presumably receiving those medications, he is able to function well. That indicates that with a proper support system that includes support to make sure that he takes the required medication, he might have a shot at being a contributing member of society.
  • debacle 14y ago
    Anti-psychotic medication isn't like taking Tylenol. It can completely change a person's personality, and people have likened it to living in a fog.
    • chris_wot 14y ago
      Agreed - I cannot find any fault in any of your arguments. My brother in law has schizophrenia and takes anti-psychotics. He sleeps all the time, finds it hard to concentrate and lives in a permanent fog. He needs these medications. But it has definitely changed him.
    • deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    • car 14y ago
      What is your point? Schizophrenia already horribly changed the patients personality, medication just helps them deal with the symptoms. Before we had these drugs, schizophrenic patients were basically tortured (e.g. Lobotomy) because there was no way to help them.
      • macey 14y ago
        The point is that it's an imperfect solution, and maybe if we fund research in this area a bit more, we can find a better one. Also, this is a bit tangential, but I don't really perceive schizophrenia as changing one's personality. I have a close friend who is schizophrenic, and when she has episodes, hardly a bit of her real self remains. It's not a personality shift, it's more like a personality stroke/seizure.
      • jetti 14y ago
        > Before we had these drugs, schizophrenic patients were basically tortured (e.g. Lobotomy) because there was no way to help them. The drugs are no better. I have done a couple stints in a private mental health (inpatient and outpatient) facilities when dealing with what was diagnosed as Schizo-affective disorder (which is basically the presence of schizophrenia and a mood disorder) and there was a teen there who was schizophrenic. He was a large dose of Risperdal (one of the major anti-psychotics) to treat the schizophrenia. I don't think I will ever forget the few weeks the doctor took him off his Risperdal. He was completely different. When on the drug, he was slow and almost catatonic at times. After been weened off, he actually had personality.
• niels_olson 14y ago
  > No, he isn't. The author is wrong. How about partially wrong? Maybe it's more accurate to say "Tim is where he is today partially because of a host of health policy decisions..." absolutes often lead to unnecessary, counterproductive arguments.
• fusiongyro 14y ago
  This fatalistic attitude isn't wrong, but it is manifestly unhelpful and surprisingly expensive. Being homeless is not a zero-cost alternative to real treatment; in many cases, the cost of lavish treatment is far lower than the cost of ER visits and criminal proceedings that would otherwise be incurred. I believe Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about chronic homelessness a few years ago, about Denver rolling out a program to take some number of homeless folks and set them up in an apartment free of charge with on-site nursing 24/7, and it was saving the city millions just by keeping them out of the ER. I believe the program ultimately came under fire because of how essentially un-American such a system is, even when it makes both ethical and financial sense.
  • debacle 14y ago
    It's 2012 - no one in the world should go homeless, unclothed, or hungry. It's inhumane. But I don't think that's what this article was about.
    • fusiongyro 14y ago
      The author is arguing that his son would not be homeless if institutional care had not be shut down, not that his son would be a productive member of society. It's practically tautological.
      • mcguire 14y ago
        "The author is arguing that his son would not be homeless if institutional care had not be shut down" Actually, he isn't. The only institutional care he mentions in the What I realize now section is "supportive short-term and long-term community housing and treatment", which doesn't sound like institutional care, in the sense of "When he was in jail, with its regular routines and meals, Tim usually stabilized". There was a reason why total institutions were, well, total. In fact, his "if I were a legislator today" comments are essentially the same as the "I jumped at the opportunity to" do actions in the 1980's.
        • 14y ago
• hmahncke 14y ago
  Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease that can absolutely be treated with a comprehensive treatment plan, including medication and psychosocial interventions (including an IEP). I didn't think the author was stating that his son wouldn't have schizophrenia if the schools had done better. I think he was saying that his son would have a better outcome with his chronic severe mental illness if various government agencies and actors were better organizing to identify and treat the illness. Perhaps it's fair to say that Tim is where he is today because of his mental illness and a host of public policy decisions we've made in this country around how we treat mental illness.
  • ignignokt 14y ago
    It can be treated if you're in the lucky few who happen to have medication work for them and are able to tolerate the side effects (glad I fall into this category). Treatment's by no means guaranteed to work.
• rayiner 14y ago
  I think you've missed the point of the article. The author isn't saying that Tim would be normal but for the policy changes. He's saying Tim wouldn't be out on the street. Which is true--there has been a huge scaling back of mental health services in this country, not just in the down economy but over the past 30 years.
• Alex3917 14y ago
  "The author is wrong, and I'm sorry for that, but it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society." In many less developed countries people with schizophrenia have better outcomes. It's only in the US where the condition is usually debilitating for life, because: A) The US healthcare system relies on longterm use of anti-psychotic medication as the main form of treatment, which tends to lead to worse outcomes in the long run. B) Family relationships in the US are generally not conducive to properly recovering from schizophrenia. In other countries the people aren't completely normally, but they're also generally not completely unable to hold a job for their entire lives like in the US.
  • efa 14y ago
    Can you elaborate? Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual? Why are they more likely to hold down a job?
    • Alex3917 14y ago
      "Are you saying in other countries the family/extended family generally care for the individual?" Schizophrenia is basically triggered & exacerbated by stress. If one becomes schizophrenic then it's possible to mostly recover from psychosis in low stress environments, but in higher stress environments it basically becomes permanent. I think that Ethan Watters discusses why it is that people in poor countries do better due to social factors in his book Crazy Like Us, and Robert Whitaker discusses the role of anti-psychotics in Anatomy of an Epidemic. In terms of social factors though, I vaguely remember that in poor countries families are more likely to let people with schizophrenia just hang out and work on recovering for years at a time, whereas in more developed countries this is less likely to happen. (Possibly because this isn't as possible due to the higher costs of living and the greater stresses of living in a society with a very unequal distribution of wealth, but I forget the exact mechanism.) As for the basic data, here is one book that summarizes it: http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=98965 http://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/article.aspx?articleid=98965
      • 14y ago
• efa 14y ago
  I completely agree with you. I think these demands on society are unrealistic. You can't expect that out of teachers and pediatricians. My experience with the school system (I have a daughter with autism) has been much better then his sounds (I hope so given it's 40 years later). We have no push back in getting our developmental pediatricians' input into our daughter's IEP. Our school provides speech and occupational therapy. But as you mentioned, schizophrenia is a whole other world (even from autism in my opinion). There is no cure. There are only lesser of many evils. You can't expect society to fix that. One thing that really bothers me are these crazy statistics - "one in every five children and one in every four adults has a diagnosable mental illness. A quarter of all mental illnesses are considered serious." One in four? Come on. If the bar is so low that one in four have a mental diagnosis it makes the term meaningless. It drives my wife and I crazy when parents claim there kid had autism but after a month on this fad diet or other they are now cured. Guess what - your kid never had autism! Don't tell that to a parent who knows their daughter will likely never leave home, never marry, and probably never hold down a meaningful job. It's just insulting.
  • chromatic 14y ago
    I assumed that that "one in every four adults" statistic includes things like depression.
• kyebosh 14y ago
  > it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society. I'm having trouble getting past this comment. I don't wish to malign you debacle - I'm sure you're not being malicious - but it seems like a very unkind & privileged mindset. I hope this isn't representative of the community. Paul Gionfriddo certainly doesn't consider his son to lack contribution.
  • Camillo 14y ago
    > but it seems like a very unkind & privileged mindset. You think being of sound mental health is a privilege? In Europe we think health is a right, which is why we have public health systems. It may sound a bit strange at first, but it works quite well.
    • cynest 14y ago
      In this context, privilege is being used in the sense of, "he was a child of privilege."
  • prodigal_erik 14y ago
    I don't see any argument that his son with "no job prospects and a debilitating mental illness" is currently capable of doing work that benefits society. He's rightly only concerned with his son's survival in the crude conditions we provide, and how he might have turned out differently.
  • THE_PUN_STOPS 14y ago
    My brother is mentally disabled. I love him dearly, and I've fight tooth and nail for him to have as normal a life as possible. However, I would not describe him as being a likely candidate for being a "contributing member of society." His affliction fundamentally prevents him from doing almost any job. That's just the reality of it.
• Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  > ADHD or blindness are not even in the same room a schizophrenia. 25% of prisoners are there because of ADHD. In aggregate it probably causes much more harm than schizophrenia.
  • mcguire 14y ago
    "25% of prisoners are there because of ADHD" Source?
    • barry-cotter 14y ago
      ADHD has a lot to do with poor impulse control. Most prisoners have low impulse control and are stupid.
      • lostlogin 14y ago
        That's rather narrow minded. If a country has a large prison population there are more people to blame than just those in the prison.
        • barry-cotter 14y ago
          Your second sentence is true. What I said is also true; Most prisoners have low impulse control and are stupid.
          • mcguire 14y ago
            "Most prisoners have low impulse control and are stupid." Source?
    • Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      Russel Barkeley's books on ADHD. He is one of the foremost scientists who studies ADHD and has found it causes devastating problems for several percent of the population. For example, it is associated with a 10 point dificit of IQ, which is itself a major problem before you even consider poor impulse control.
• DanBC 14y ago
  > The author is wrong, and I'm sorry for that, but it's very unlikely that his son would have ever been a contributing member of society. Schizophrenia is a severe mental disease that cannot be treated like a 'special need.' I have met very many people with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Some of those people were drug users (or had been drug users); some of those people were "forensic" patients and were being held in secure hospitals; some of those people were in the community, on medication, with full time work. Schizophrenia is a complex illness that expresses in a wide range of behaviours, and a broad depth of severities of behaviours. One person may hear a few voices, but be able to cope well with those voices, while another people may hear more voices which are very threatening and hard to cope with. Please, I understand what you're saying. (Some people with schizophrenia are very ill, and will need extensive support just to avoid homelessness) but I find your comment a bit stigmatising. Many people with schizophrenia do work; not all of them work full time paid employment but it's certainly possible for someone with a diagnosis of schizophrenia to lead a full and productive life.
  • barry-cotter 14y ago
    All of what you said is true but this guy's son hsd early onset schizophrenia. The prognosis for late onset is really bad but for late onset it's terrible. Most schizophrenics are not capable of a full and productive life unless medicated and many, many people fail to keep up their treatment regimen because the drugs are hell for many too.