If This Isn’t Danger, Then WHAT THE HECK IS?!? or Loosening the (Nearly) Impossible Standard-by Alpheus Madsen.
This Guest Blog Post started off its life as a comment to Sarah’s previous post from a few days ago, But! It’s Madness! – According to Hoyt, where she expresses the conflict between two very important, and very valid concerns:
(1) the need to help the obviously mental ill who are on the streets, and who are obviously impacting society in harmful ways, and
(2) the need to protect mostly-sane people (to the extent that any of us are sane, to be sure!) from being committed, when the reason for that commitment isn’t really mental health, but disagreements over politics, religion, inheritances, and so forth.
While it’s true that many mental institutions were abusive to their patients, they nonetheless served an important role in providing a places where the severely mentally ill could be helped, and while it’s true that it was Soviets who locked up and drugged anyone they disagreed with, we unfortunately have plenty of stories where, in our America, of individuals who were able to do the same thing. So, without further ado …
This has been something that has been on my mind for several years now — both because I have read “My Brother Ron”, and also because well before that book was finished, my sister was diagnosed schizophrenic.
One of the biggest take-aways from that book is the “Danger to self or others” — and about how pretty much the only way you could be deemed a “danger” if if you’ve just stabbed or killed someone.
That woman who believes she is dead and is slowly starving herself? (An example given in “My Brother Ron”.) According to the current “standard” she’s not a danger somehow. In the case of this woman, she starved herself to death. (This is something particularly relevant to me, because that’s how my sister started out with her diagnosis — fortunately she got to a point where she voluntarily accepted treatment!)
That homeless guy who rants at passers-by, who threatens them, and who occasionally punches someone? Somehow it is justifiable to periodically put him in jail for a few days, and then release him, over and over again — until he goes and pushes a young woman onto the tracks of an incoming train.
That guy who can’t stay in a homeless shelter, even though it’s freezing (and heck, even though he has an apartment that, between social security and auto-payment, remains paid for even when empty, but isn’t used because he’s convinced it’s bugged — another example from “My Brother Ron”) either because he’s paranoid to go inside, or between drug use and angry tirades, he has to be kicked out — how is this not a danger to self, even putting aside others? How many homeless froze to death because of this?
So I would propose that a simple starting point for fixing the homeless problem, helping the mentally ill, and preventing the system from getting out of hand, is to expand “Danger to self or others” to include people who are, indeed, a danger to self or others! But it doesn’t have to be expanded greatly to have an enormous effect in both reducing homelessness and helping the mentally ill.
I would propose that being homeless and not able to hold a job should be a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for committing people against their will. If someone can wander the streets without accosting strangers, and can stay in shelters without getting kicked out (whether for using drugs or for being actively hostile to others), then that person shouldn’t be committed. A homeless, jobless person who does start doing these things — particularly if they’re getting arrested for these things, is a danger to self or others, and thus needs intervention.
Now, for purposes of removing people off the street, I kind of don’t care whether the individual is mentally unstable because of insanity, or due to a drug-addled brain — but the first step for treating someone committed should be to check for underlying physical conditions. As Sarah has pointed out, the mind is connected to the body in funny ways. I recently encountered a story of a meth addict who had been used for “before” and “after” pictures to show how awful meth can be … only to have her appearance continue to deteriorate, even after a year of sobriety … because it turned out that she had Lupus, and her meth addiction may have been partly self-medication for that. Whether the person has schizophrenia, is drug-addled, or just has other issues, it should be considered important to find and try to treat underlying conditions first, because other treatments won’t work as well without that!
Also, another random thought: commitment rooms should be comfortable to live in, should be “homey”, and inmates should be treated kindly. I can’t remember where I saw it, but I recently saw a study that suggests that, regardless of the mental issue, it’s far better to treat the patient in a nice environment than it is to put the person in a small, sterile, white room, which is apparently the current standard practice.
Should someone be forced into treatment? I’m not entirely sure I can say for sure — however, I will say this: if someone is belligerent, treatment should be a requirement for transfer to a half-way house — and if the person can stop taking medication (maybe he’s come to terms with his schizophrenia, for example, and has learned what his hallucinations are, and could learn to ignore them) and still function reasonably well, then I doubt it would be productive to force the individual to continue medication. But if the person goes back to being a danger, whether or not the person is still on meds, the person should be re-committed.
If someone is living in a home, and maybe even holding down a job, and is starting fights with strangers or making threats, that person should be considered sane, and should be charged with assault in these cases. It might be a good idea to check for underlying conditions for that individual too, though, particularly if it’s a clear personality change. But commitment should be off the table completely, unless an underlying mental illness has been clearly identified and it’s to the point where his new aggression is both related to the disease and is rising to the danger of self or others.
Now, this is by no means a perfect solution — in particular, the people on the boundary of insanity and intelligence, who are far enough gone to decide to kill people in crowds, but still have enough sanity to plot, plan, and acquire the means to do so, will inevitably fall through the cracks — because they will usually be just outside this strengthened standard of danger of self or others.
This is also going to miss people who lose their mind and go crazy, but don’t do so at a level to qualify as a danger to self or others — and may even refuse treatment that would be extremely helpful. Such individuals, so long as they are being cared for and have a place to stay, and aren’t hurting other people, will almost certainly slip through the cracks.
Perhaps there is a way to forcibly treat such an individual without going down a route that would be easily hijacked by evil people to drug innocents — whether it’s forced by family or by bureaucrats, it’s easy to see how such can be abused by greedy and/or power-hungry people — but it may very well be the case that these people would be a “sacrifice” we have to make, to be able to commit people who clearly need committing and to leave unmolested people who are clearly sane.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk! I am just a lone mathematician pretending to be a software engineer, so I don’t expect this proposal to reach the halls where it needs to be heard, but I figured that if I vented here, this proposal could at least get into a few more minds.
And come to think of it, this post was a lot longer than I expected. Heck, if anyone else thinks this would be a good blog post, don’t bother to ask me for permission, just use it: I think this is an important enough idea that it should be spread as far and wide as possible. Perhaps it’s not the best solution to both helping our mentally ill and preventing our psychiatric institutions from being hijacked by evil people, but I think it’s at least a good starting point!
According To Hoyt 
I’ve been thinking about a different matter.
Charlie Kirk literally had about a semester of college enrollment, and one of the original seven liberal arts of the original universities was rhetoric.
I first started realizing that there may be actual faculty with real degrees who were completely useless at supporting their claims in any sort of contested environment around the time of sad puppies.
That any academic fields lost to Kirk on merits, or that faculty lost to him in rhetoric is maybe a rather scathing indictment of how academia trains people, and how it has reached the current point.
Okay, modern graduate school is specialization, and about none of that is rhetoric of the truly competitive variety.
But, it does not matter how many years of my life I have wasted on some niche of academic theory. What people say about the ideas I am invested in does not change whether those ideas are true or false.
What people say is social status. If I have made my social status feelings about some question where a five year old can demonstrate I am wrong, and a five year old does, and I feel bad, that is kinda on me.
The people who had the sorts of inner emotional investments to hate Charlie Kirk were very unwell. Now, academia is hot steaming garbage, with maybe some nuggets of real treasure buried away, but the people who don’t see that, and were salty at Kirk, were maybe not the greatest and most suited of thinkers, even if their actual specialties are ‘good’ areas of theory, and even if they were competent at those ‘good’ theories.
It might be seen as an admission against interest to say that people should be fired for mental helath issues, it is actually not. It is in my interest for it to be possible to fire people with issues, depending on how they behave, and depending on how they treat other people.
One, I do not want to feel locked into a position where psychopaths are abusing me with impunity.
Two, a third order effect of it being impossible to fire the ill is that nobody will want to hire anyone already known to have issues, particularly behavioral and social issues. So it is actually substantially in my interest that there be usable mechanisms to fire the seriously and disruptively ill. Because it is in my interest for people to be willing to hire me.
Anyway, wanting to celebrate the murder of Charlie Kirk is pretty much a matter of being seriously ill. Actually doing it, and actually publicizing it, is being ill in a way that is behavioral and involves behavior towards others.
You can argue it as a purely political crime. Punishing public celebration could be understood as a political punishment of a political crime.
As a twenty year veteran (1) of the army of the republic of Rome, and as a Centurion, I say that Caesar has the right idea to fire these ill people.
But, yes, the firings are correct.
My third motivation is that I have no motivation to control my own behavior, no incentive to improve my behavior towards others, if I simply get a free pass for every single time I mistreat someone.
Anyway, standing for firings for cause is one necessary but not sufficient thing to do or to preserve.
Committing people is another necessary and probably not sufficient thing.
I’m rather intensively cynical about outcomes I have seen, perhaps unfairly. I’m gonna take a raincheck on explaining, on the grounds that I may still be in mourning.
(1) This is a joke, and I think a very strained metaphor.
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It is, indeed a good starting point. The idea that a person can be adjudicated as unfit for trial, and then released on his own reconnaissance, is ludicrous. If they are too insane or too incompetent to assist in their own defense (the standard in my old state) then surely they are too incompetent to be allowed to roam the streets.
Along with this we have the problem of the individual that is “in treatment” they find a med that works for said individual, get them functional, and they check themselves out as “cured” only to decide that “I didn’t like how that drug made me feel, so I quit taking it.” (Yes I heard this come out of the mouth of more than one individual that I had in my back seat on the way to the Kitsap County Jail.)
We have to do better. Maybe for the ones who we’ve found a drug cocktail that works, mandatory reporting once a week, to check blood drug levels, failure on the test means immediate “check in” to the center once again. Or for those that can take the medicine weekly, monthly… Mandatory reporting for medical administration of the drug. Violation of these mandatory check ins is a class C felony as “aggravated contempt of court” or maybe Parole Violation?
On the ones being involuntarily admitted, how about this? Three doctor board, and a judge. One doctor chosen by the people who want to admit the person, one by the person, and one from a bank of random Shrinks, approved by the courts. If you’re too far gone to select your own doctor, a gardiem adlitem (sp) will be appointed and they will select a doctor for you.
Yes, it’s still not perfect, but it at least meets the Prato rule.
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The person I had in mind when I mentioned learning what your hallucinations are so you could ignore them was John Nash as depicted in “A Beautiful Mind”. In that case, he had the support and enough control to be free without taking medication.
If someone explaining he doesn’t like how his meds make him feel from the back of a patrol car, or in jail, I cannot help but think that such a patient needs to remain committed. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that the meds should be forced on anyone, but freedom should be contingent on taking meds and/or staying out of trouble.
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For people who faithfully show up to get their medication every month, if it’s in a form that can be self-administered (such as a pill), after say a year of not missing a single appointment, I might allow them to provide video of them taking their pills (and showing an empty mouth to the camera afterwards to prove they didn’t just spit the pills out). Would not prove that they didn’t induce vomiting afterwards to get rid of the pills, but I suspect rather few would go to those lengths, and perhaps mandatory random blood-level checking every so often would be able to prove that the dose was being consumed.
But the odds of a sensible proposal like yours being adopted in the places that need it most (like California) are basically zero, so there’s little point in refining the proposal.
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There is a homeless fellow in our small town. He appears to live on those “Little Pantry” boxes that have popped up everywhere. People put food in them, other people can help themselves. I see him walking around town regularly with shopping bags and afaik he is the only one who gets food there. I have said hi a couple times and been ignored. OK, I’d rather he not be walking around my town but whatever, so far harmless. Then I start chatting with a female friend who has a young daughter and I discover that the women find him creepy. He has followed some of them and tried to engage with their daughters. He avoids men, creeps women. We apparently have to wait until he actually does something, though, even though he has no visible means of support and no actual home. There is the problem. I suppose we could move him on down the road, but not without risking a lawsuit, and not sure that a majority of the people in town would even support that small action.
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Small resource-poor communities were often relieved of their mentally addled by nature. The predators got them, or the weather. And if the mentally handicapped soul was particularly creeping out young girls or wives, some menfolk got together quietly one night and “helped” the poor thing get better acquainted with nature.
As a youngster I watched the neighborhood Perv get invited to move on by men with flaming torches and rifles. Perv left. No one would ever speak of it afterwards. When I asked, folks just ignored me and discussed something else.
Not ideal, but it works somewhat for small resource poor communities. The little girls in my neighborhood, including my sister, did not again fall victim to perv.
Problem is, that solution gets to be too easy, and often not so restrained. Having some sort of formal societal method prevents the do-it-yourself method, often known as the Death Squad or Necktie Party. Those can get out of hand. Then again, so can the more formal societal ones.
“Do nothing” is bad, because it almost begs for DIY answers.
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Being both a product of a rural upbringing, and a retired veteran, I’m not real big on inviting neighborhood pervs to move on. My problem, my duty to solve the problem. Dumping toxic waste on other people just because I don’t want it in my back yard is not a way to build a country. When you have a rabid dog in the neighborhood, you get the town animal control agent (or equivalent) to take care of it, or lacking that personage, you do it yourself, basically applying the 3S method.
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(grin) I wasn’t asked my opinion. Too young.
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“Friend Mailclerk, I see you’re having a wee bit of trouble digging that hole with just a shovel. Want me to bring over my bucket loader and a cold six pack for afterwards?”
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(grin)
Not too terribly long ago, I lived in an area frequented by alligators, wild hogs, and buzzards. Roadkill usually lasted a day or less.
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Very interesting.
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The institutionalization of the mentally ill is, I think, one of those things that has first and foremost been made difficult by the left’s (and, to be far, in this particular case not ONLY the left) attitude of “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”
There is no way I can see to entirely eliminate the problem that some of the mentally ill who are institutionalized end up abused. Not all the money or staffing in the world can do that, because humans are human, and some humans truly suck–especially if they are in a position of power over those who cannot easily make known any abuse to them. My best idea for reducing it would be to have incredibly harsh penalties for such abuse–but necessarily equally high requirements for unassailable evidence would be needed, because mentally ill does not equal “incapable of lying, manipulating, or making crap up to injure someone” (see also: narcissists.)
Then, of course, there’s our particularly American problem regarding personal rights: what should the standard be to remove the personal right to liberty (among other natural rights) of a mentally ill person? This is where the problem of mental illness itself comes, I think, because it can manifest and vary so wildly from individual to individual. One severe schizophrenic may, once in receipt of treatment, do fine and can lead a mostly-normal life. Another will constantly go off the medication (I do understand a lot of the meds–not just for schizophrenia, but a LOT of medications–make one feel awful) and can’t function during those times–so where does the line get drawn? (I think one should be found, not just do what they like to do right now and have no line and ignore the problem) I think there also needs to be a lot more research to find better treatments/medication–so how does one tempt our currently-fairly-unethical pharmaceutical industry to do this, especially when medications for mental illness treatment really are one of those that needs to be affordable to everyone?
And, of course, how do tighten the standards on the psychology profession to account for the current problems with bad doctors (of course, that’s a problem in EVERY field, sadly), misdiagnoses, and the weird tendency of mental health doctors appearing to be themselves…mentally ill? (It’s a joke in the profession, I gather…but it’s a joke because it’s not really a joke at all, it seems. Or perhaps that’s just psychiatrists? Can we do away with those, then?)
It’s a complicated problem, with a lot of moving and constantly shifting parts. There will never be a perfect solution–and that as much as anything I think is why the left fights tooth and nail at ANY solution, because the perfect is the enemy of the good in full force here–and this is one of those areas where it’s all too easy for them to co-opt genuinely compassionate folks who remember or who have read about the mistreatment of the past and automatically reject anything that seems remotely like it. :/
I think the first step is to admit that we can’t go on as we have been, and that we DO have to consider acceptable solutions. And while we’re figuring that out, the ones who are a danger to themselves and others are going to have to be taken off the streets (and then there’s the ever-present danger of government inertia that would be inclined to leave them to rot, sigh).
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We had an acquaintance when we lived in the Northeast who would call my beloved and talk to him for hours. Well, he is easy to talk to and he has some training in counseling, so we accepted this as one of the prices of doing business in the SCA.
I bring it up because one, she had some notable quirks in her gallop. Two, she was a social worker for a large Northeastern city. And three, she strongly implied to my beloved that if any of her clients got better, that would reduce her caseload, which would be a bad thing. And was regarded as a bad thing by social workers in general. I have no idea if she was right on the last point, but it is horrifyingly plausible.
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“…if any of her clients got better, that would reduce her caseload, which would be a bad thing”
That’s a problem in many professions. When crime is high, popular will calls for more enforcement, which means more police and bigger budgets. When crime is low, people question the need for such a big police force. If you’re the chief of police your budget and prestige are directly proportional to the extent that people feel threatened by crime. If you do your job successfully, people question why they are paying you. This is sometimes known as the Fox Butterfield Effect, to wit, why are so many people in prison when crime is down? When a huge societal problem emerges (think Jim Crow), organizations arise to fight it. When these organizations prove successful, they don’t go away. They just change their focus. The Southern Poverty Law Center once existed to combat the hatred and violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Once the Klan was almost eradicated to the extent of being just a minor nuisance of a few nutcases, the SPLC started inventing “hate groups” to keep the money coming in. There are very few Cincinnatus’ types in the world.
Unfortunately I have no answers on how to incentivize an organization to successfully marginalize itself.
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My philosophy on police budgets is you need to pay them enough to not go looking for a job elsewhere. Economics matters, even to a beat cop. As for how many cops you need, as an old retired military guy, you don’t send your people into a life or death situation without backup. Which means you should have at least 2 cops on any call, 3 is better if you have a domestic disturbance, or drunk/drugged/crazy person; especially if you want any choice of response less lethal than shoot them dead. Ideally, you want the option of tasing, or talking them down. You don’t want to have to physically take them down because that puts the cop at greatest risk. And if you have 3 on a call, you still need a pair for a second call. When you live in a rural town, multiply that by 4 for rotating shifts, and by 5 to account for sick time and vacation time.
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At one point I asked about someone I love who is…ah… not the kind to go on a police call.
But they were there, and wearing big gear, and some tricks to make them look bigger, and winter gear so you couldn’t see who was a paperwork granny.
Because the safest option is for the person being arrested to not think there’s any reasonable chance of resisting successfully. As you point out, it is safer for the person being arrested.
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March of Dimes syndrome. But once polio was more or less cured, they moved onto another scourge (birth defects) rather than go toxic like SPLC
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A distinctly vaguer scourge.
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Born in 48. I can remember my parents being petrified by polio. OTH that might have been something to do with me being the only survivor of 5 pregnancies. Depends on your perspective.
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The thing is that you can declare “polio” fixed. “Birth defects” is a larger and more vague remit.
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It’s why, despite having the most egalitarian society in history, we still have “activists” shrieking about racism and sexism and so on all over the place. If they admitted those things are a pretty minor problem nowadays, they’d have to go get a new job. Worse, not only will they not admit it, they’re actively doing everything they can to MAKE those things a problem again!!!
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Reminds me of how, when unrestricted hunting was promoted as a solution to the feral pig problem, certain places quickly acquired a feral pig population, courtesy of people who wanted the unrestricted hunting.
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These are lovely, reasonable thoughts. But they come upon three harsh realities: (1) It takes a lot of money and human attention to follow individual people closely, analyze what’s going on inside their heads, and provide them a “cozy” space to recover. (2) It may be impossible to discern underlying thoughts and conditions, even with the help of family members and concerned caregivers. We don’t understand mental illness all that well, and definitions in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) keep revising. (3) There will always be advocates for patients’ rights and disability rights, along with “peers” speaking for their cohort, who will fight this every step of the way. But good luck!
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The reason they typically get “not cozy – sterile and easy to clean” is that the confined mentally aberrant occasionally make -epic- messes, especially when angry or upset. “Fingerpaint with poo” is a minimum. And unlike a toddler, the volume of nasty they produce can be…. well, epic.
And anything “cozy” that is throwable/breakable/heavy becomes a potential weapon to use on others.
So that “NP Ward – early modern padded cell” motif becomes the default. “Easy to hose out, nothing to break/throw.”
You wind up seeing commonality with higher-security prisons.
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A policeman of my acquaintance, while a week-one rookie, was tasked with solo apprehending a crazy. The 6 foot two hundred pound mildly combative man (rassle me!) was self-anointed with his trademark head to toe mix of Vaseline and excrement.
Not vicious. Generally didn’t try to hurt the cops. Just liked to “rassle!”. Even if you just taze him, now what?
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Hazmat suit? Use a rope to drag him onto a flatbed for transport?
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Firehose.
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I’d question the motives, ethics and judgement of whoever assigned a week-one rookie to that task.
And as for tazing him…if the taser is ineffective, he would probably, lacking experience, revert to his training, which would involve slightly more lethal options.
Bad idea…😠
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Clayton Cramer has pointed out that, between our jails being poorly equipped to handle mental illness, the destruction caused by the mentally ill homeless wandering the streets, and the harms that they cause others — this comes out to be more expensive than keeping them committed, whether in “cozy” settings or sterile.
In the “phantom article” I referenced, it made the point that the reason why “cozy” is a good idea, is because it helps mental patients calm down and not be so destructive (which is one reason that 11B-Mailclerk gave for the “sterile” rooms).
Come to think of it, this doesn’t just apply to the mentally ill! Around the time my wife was pregnant with her first child, I had learned that there’s been a trend to move from small, sterile rooms for expectant mothers to large-ish, “homey” rooms where patients could be more comfortable. And I could see that trend expanding from delivery rooms to the rest of the hospital in general.
It’s something that makes a lot of sense to me — and it doesn’t take much to make a room “cozy”. Things like paneling, off-white paint, pictures on the wall, and so forth — can do it. If the weaponization of things are a concern, it wouldn’t be hard to, say, bolt the pictures onto the wall (or just paint them on).
Also, the pictures have to be nice. I’m pretty sure if they were modern “art”, they would just make psychosis worse (or start an episode if there isn’t one there yet).
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With respect to patient comfort, partly due to other circumstances, the trend for day surgery offers plusses. I’ve had multiple rounds of such, with only one where the surgeon would have liked for me to stay overnight (stupid COVID restrictions blocked off most of the rooms in the hospital–courtesy Despicable Kate Brown (D-testable, OR) and the Oregon “Health” Authority). The rest had me going home, or where not feasible, to a convenient hotel room for a few days.
IMHO, knowledge that barring Murphy getting frisky, the fact that I’m leaving post-op makes me very happy. Last year’s arthroscopic procedure on the right knee followed that model, and that’s the plan for the upcoming left knee one. (Bearing in mind that said knee has more issues, see Murphy.)
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And for the love of God, can they please abandon that cold, dusty pastel color scheme? I know, they say it’s neutral and calming. What it is, is depressing. How about some *warm* neutral colors instead? I bet we’d see a small, but measurable uptick in patient health outcomes across the board. But even if I’m wrong, everybody will be a bit happier — which is why I say medical outcomes could improve, because the body and mind are a unit. Happiness matters.
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There is always the Democrat solution to mental illness — elect or appoint them to public office. 😲
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I think Minnesota has been trying that. (Tim Walz, Keith Ellison, Ill-mannered Omar….)
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Ah, the perfect explanation for the feces-fest that describes Oregon’s state government.
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A young lady I used to work with was being attacked by demon dogs. The sight of any small dog would throw her into hysterics, convinced that the dog was going to kill her. Big dogs or cats, no problem. She functioned fairly normally otherwise. Yes, she had family support. She refused any medication. Maladapted? Yes. Danger to others? No.
A client urinated in a jar because her voices told her if she left her chair they would kill her. Maladapted? Yes. Danger to others? No.
Both had family support and a place to live. Neither was a danger.
With modern materials and disinfectants, the sterile environment problem is potentially fixable. With modern AI and surveillance, abuse is potentially solvable as well, as long as enforcement is allowed.
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Sorry, I wasn’t finished wditing but WP has frozen the chat field four times and I’m tired of fighting it.
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A well-polyurethaned wood floor is both warming to see and easy to clean. A small rubber backed rug is comforting to step on when getting out of the bed in the morning, and fairly easy to clean.
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Heck, they’ve got entirely waterproof flooring now that does a surprisingly good job of looking like wood or stone. Doesn’t feel at all like the real thing if you’re barefoot, but we can’t have everything…yet. At least durable and easily cleaned doesn’t have to be a synonym for brutal and ugly anymore.
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cordless? rolled up tighly?
Rug pulled/chewed apart into cordage?
Flooring chipped loose? Or just grooved where someone endlessly scratches?
A family friend is retired Corrections. Got stabbed with a paper mache dagger, made from TP and body waste/fluids, reinforced with thread from a frayed con uniform.
A “safe” con wanted higher status.
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No solution is perfect. I like to point out that it wasn’t me that put the blindfold on the iconic statue of Justice. It’s just the recognition of reality. Mistakes and injustice are inevitable. We are obligated to minimize them, but it’s madness to change the rules to prevent the injustice of fringe cases. I like to quote Andrew Klavan, “Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical.”
Likewise I’ve recognized all my life that what you tolerate you will soon be made to celebrate. If I don’t want to lock up men for dressing up like and presenting themselves as women, I must subsidize drag queen story hours for young kids with my tax dollars. If I agree that what sex someone chooses to have a relationship with in private is not important, I will be made to celebrate Gay Pride parades that include the lewdest and most dehumanizing behavior.
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When it comes to what we tolerate, I don’t necessarily think that we need to lock up men who like to wear dresses. The biggest issue is that the Left is pushing the boundaries as far as they could, and yell “Intolerance!” when we push back. And they are worming their way into every little societal crevice they could find, to drive wedges between us, so they can take control when we get tired of all the chaos and and demand that they take all control to make it stop.
Of course, that never seems to happen — we can see quite nicely, thank you very much, that your “no bail” and “revolving door justice” and “release the rapists and murderers” policies are resulting in unsuspecting young women getting stabbed in the neck and pushed in front of trains — and we can see it’s happening on your watch. Thus, when the people finally get fed up, they rise up, go out, and vote Republican, among other things.Except in mail-in ballot (and other machine-run) States. For some reason, they “vote” the same people in, over and over again, no matter how bad it gets. Funny, that!
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For values of “funny” that exclude good humor, alas. I find myself wondering just how monolithic the voting really is in NW Oregon, particularly outside Metro Portland.
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It never seems to cross their tiny minds that we might get tired of all the chaos they create and demand that they have no control over anything. Firmly.
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I think a large part of the issue that Psychology/Psychiatric treatment is still in its very early stages. It is still diagnosed almost solely by symptoms because we do NOT understand the underlying causes. Take depression for example. We found that serotonin production/uptake seems to be an issue in SOME depression, But in others it does nothing or even makes it worse and many of the SRI’s have broad ranging side effects. But many of the psychiatric trained folks seem to think the SRI’s should always work and look at people that say it doesn’t crosswise. They are like the old sobriquet, “to someone that has a hammer all the world looks like a nail.” Much of the older basis for Psychiatry (Jung, Freud, Roger ) have no actual basis in the physical and skate into places that look nothing so much else but like witch doctors (I’m Looking at You Jung). These explicit flavors have MOSTLY died out but their descendants either stole some of the nonsense or have manufactured some of their own.
Any Medicine is hard because the human body is this giant interrelated system. Fix this problem over here and the medication you use may exacerbate (or even create) another problem over there. It reminds me nothing so much of trying to fix spaghetti code in programming. And mental health is a thousand times worse because 1) we have no fricking clue how most of this works and 2) any measurements we take have to be objective for the most part. Its not like Blood Pressure when you can give someone the medications and then observe BP and see 130/68 Huzzah (of course then there are side effects…). You have to ask “How do you feel” and your narrator may NOT be trustworthy (whether of their own volition or not). Add to this the insane non physical, non data based world view of an MSW or your average psychologist, and you have an issue.
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Heck, even with blood pressure there’s problems. Any given measurement may or may not be the blood pressure the patient actually lives with on an ordinary basis; mine has gone from “is your medication even working?” at the beginning of a doctor visit to close-enough-to-normal when retaken at the end. And that also doesn’t take into account people who may actually be perfectly healthy with blood pressure that reads unusually low (does the same go for high? maybe not…I don’t know).
Anyway…
The mental health profession desperately wants to be seen as rigorous, logical, and evidence-based, but there’s no way to actually *measure* what’s going on in people’s heads. So even with the best intentions and the best possible methods, they’re stuck using a bunch of machines (i.e., their brains) that are potentially very poorly calibrated, and whose calibration values can’t be verified with any kind of precision, to assess the calibration of other machines that also may or may not be seriously out of whack. You just can’t get reliable results that way.
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“And that also doesn’t take into account people who may actually be perfectly healthy with blood pressure that reads unusually low (does the same go for high? maybe not…I don’t know).”
I don’t know about ‘perfectly healthy’ but in nursing school I worked a local health fair, and one lovely lady decided to prank me.
I was taking blood pressures; her systolic was over 200 mmHg (notional ‘normal’ is about 120). Observing my startle, she kindly told me that yes, that number was normal for her, she was on medication, and her doctor knew about it.
I was going to chime in about sterile living environment, but 11B-Mailclerk got it.
Where I worked in Assisted Living we had a Memory Care wing. Some of them were just sweet, all the time. Some were not; fortunately, we didn’t have to keep the combative ones, as we were private and the residents were paying a pretty hefty fee. But some forms of dementia mentally regress to before toilet training, and that is a constant concern for both the overall residential environment and the individual physical health of the resident so afflicted.
(If you’re considering Assisted Living or other group home residence, by the way, bring someone with a good nose and tour the place. If you smell urine, the staff is not keeping up. It is not so much having the individual residents clean and dry, though that is very important, but soiled clothes need to be kept in covered containers while waiting to be washed, and disposables need to be moved out to the dumpster several times a day. And then there is furniture, chair and couch cushions especially.)
Two other categories of ‘homeless’: the frankly criminal, who prey on the others, and the venal, lazy-ish who don’t see the need to work or be someplace with rules when someone(s) will offer tents and food and drug paraphernalia for free. Some overlap, of course, with the drug-addled and mentally ill groups.
And there really are some ‘temporarily financially embarrassed’ out there; IIRC, one of the posters here had experienced, and overcome, that.
But the general ‘Housing First’ model has been a failure, and it’s Time To Try Something Else.
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I interviewed a woman who had recently been homeless several years ago, and she was pretty much what everyone pictures if they don’t look too closely. Some terrible circumstances out of her control, some exacerbating factors (alcohol and not being very bright), and there she was on the streets. She did NOT want to be out there, and within a couple-three months she got into a subsidized apartment. Had a part-time job and a roommate and was getting/staying sober when I talked to her.
She made it very clear that virtually all of the “homeless” she’d seen on the street, on the order of 95 percent-plus, had severe problems and didn’t WANT to be anything else. They were addicts and lunatics, not mere unfortunates down on their luck, and she stayed the hell away from them for her own safety and sanity.
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I have to do some fast talking when the relevant medic looks at my BP. Now, that’s under control (usually), but my resting pulse rate is in the mid 30s, and has been so for over 35 years at least. Had one day-surgery experience where they shot me with something to elevate the pulse rate. Didn’t do much beyond annoying me.
(The heart speeds up when necessary. My cardiologist figures I might need a pacemaker in a decade or two. Maybe. OTOH, there’s other heart issues that matter more.)
Jerry Brown closed the asylums some time in the 1970s. One local to Silicon Valley had a tremendous amount of land around it. I wonder who managed to make $$$ off that land.
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I got my blood pressure checked the other day. 120/71, and I was told it’s “elevated.”
I used to dance a lot, and I literally panicked the first time it popped above 100/50.
New guidelines are weird.
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120/71 is elevated? That’s just wrong, so wrong. Sounds like you need different medical practitioners.
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It’s the new-ish screening thing.
See, folks who develop high blood pressure have this range.
Therefore, those who have this range are going to develop high blood pressure if they don’t act.
Thus, “elevated” is perfectly fine, but start acting lik eyou have high blood pressure. And that makes it so that those who migth otherwise have developed it won’t.
….or so the theory goes, and yes that ignores a ton of relevant information.
My dad got caught in this when he had a birthday and got bumped into tighter screening for risk of high blood pressure.
https://www.medicine.net/news/Cardiovascular/Blood-Pressure-Chart-With-Readings-By-Age-and-Sex.html
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That’s even more absurd. First, blood pressure varies tremendously during any day. If I take mine within a half hour of waking up and before any serious activity (keyboard pushing doesn’t count), my BP is usually around 110/75. Two hours later it’s typically 130/84. If I’m talking to someone while taking the test, it’s around 140-145.
The article you link (yes, I realize it’s linked for information and is not your endorsement) defines the average adult over 60 as having so-called Stage 1 hypertension by definition. (They probably used the mean instead of the more appropriate mode for the more statistically savvy among us.) The Red Cross that measures my BP every time I give blood doesn’t signal any concern until my BP is 140, and I’m a white rabbit aka an iron bunny (If you don’t grok Chinese astrology, that means I’m 74.)
Our medical system is great at emergency medicine and prevention by vaccination (for real vaccines like polio and tetanus, not so-called flu “vaccines”). If you’re shot or in a car accident, definitely go to the ER. OTOH our medical system is pathetic at chronic conditions. They frequently do more harm than good.
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Preach it, Brother Frank.
Bingo.
This is besides the way that basically nobody bothers to do blood pressure correctly.
When I was pregnant, the first sign I had that Baby Was Coming Out Today was that the nurse came in and did my blood pressure measurement correctly– they never make sure I can touch the floor.
It’s nonsense, the same way they’ll tell you to lose ten pounds, while never adjusting for you wearing ten pounds of clothing.
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Preeclampsia, for those wondering.
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Weight is a little easier to manage. Since I’m trying to lose weight, I weigh myself every morning just after I get up, wearing only my boxers and t-shirt. That way I have a consistent baseline. Yes my clothes add a good 7 pounds. (All that loose change, and a stuffed wallet weigh a lot, not to mention shoes. :) ) Also, once I eat and start drinking (only water you blue-noses!), that puts on another 2 or 3 pounds. Since I have a baseline measurement taken under the same conditions every day, I can chart my real progress.
Not that you asked, but I’m down 20 pounds since January with another 15 to go. So I might even be able to handle a meal at The City Diner next year at LibertyCon. :)
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I have teen girls, so I’ve been getting them to do the same thing– weigh self first thing, then put on clothing for the day, then find out where on the range of 7-15 pounds they’re falling today.
Also, good work!
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Thanks. I put on a lot of weight after my wife passed back in 2021. I had been eating small meals because that was all she could handle, and, after she passed, I quit paying attention.
After I had a serious infection last year, probably from a bug bite, they detected some irregular heartbeats, so the health industry launched into beast mode to try to prove I was going to die. Eventually they gave up and my cardiologist said, “You’re OK, just go home, try to lose weight slowly and get some exercise. Still working on the exercise part. My brain still thinks I can just power myself back into shape, but my body tells me I’m not that guy anymore.
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Oh, and teen girls. I’ll add you to my prayer list. :)
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Re inaccurate weight: It was 6F when I had my physical. They did not let me remove my heavy boots, and fretted while I took off the insulated boiled wool coat I was wearing. Then fussed about my putting on weight.
Hello!
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But many of the psychiatric trained folks seem to think the SRI’s should always work and look at people that say it doesn’t crosswise. They are like the old sobriquet, “to someone that has a hammer all the world looks like a nail.”
Yes. The modern-psychiatric approach (both seeing this and saying this as a total outsider, from either the “giving” or the “getting” side, by the way) so often tends to see everything psychological as being somehow and inevitably a purely physical or material disorder. Forgetting (possibly with philosophical and/or doctrinal help) that the mind as well as the brain is what this is all about, and possibly going purely with the latest, shiniest fads in the second, having simply forgotten all about the first, as and in itself.
This materialist, jump-on-the-bandwagon approach does work, sometimes, and even very well; but it could be likened, in its worst and less fortunate of cases, to trying to fix a bug in Windows by ‘repairing’ the computer.
It’s not improved by the fact it’s so hard to even define what ‘mind’ or ‘consciousness’ really is, after all those years and generations of hard work and relentless trial-and-error effort.
Much of the older basis for Psychiatry (Jung, Freud, Roger ) have no actual basis in the physical and skate into places that look nothing so much else but like witch doctors (I’m Looking at You Jung). These explicit flavors have MOSTLY died out but their descendants either stole some of the nonsense or have manufactured some of their own.
Okay, time out here. What you’re dismissing as “nonsense” there is really the entire field of “depth psychology” itself — that long running and still not notably triumphant effort to understand the mind as such, and to (try to) treat its (objectively visible and consequential) malfunctions. (Again it’s not helpful that no-one can build an instrument to detect a mind, directly, or to measure its qualities and attributes.)
Arguably this is one of those modern fads, to go full reductionist slash materialist, and claim only physical interventions are real. It’s not at all diminished by the scandalous requirement of many HMOs and insurers that “real” psychologists include their unredacted session notes with any insurance filing or claim — which essentially, given an ethical full disclosure to the client, annihilates traditional confidentiality and thus neuters all but the most superficial of interactions or disclosures.
So perhaps it is true, comparatively, that “These explicit flavors have MOSTLY died out” though that by no means equates to their uselessness. But given that depth psychology does at least try for a genuine cure, and in some cases even gets there, while 15-minute-plus-pills ‘medicine’ offers only (at its very best) a “lifetime” dependence on drug-company products, this might not be the best possible strategy (for the clients) overall.
(to be continued)
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(concluded)
…and skate into places that look nothing so much else but like witch doctors (I’m Looking at You Jung). These explicit flavors have MOSTLY died out but their descendants either stole some of the nonsense…
Do you actually have any real idea, whatsoever, what you’re talking about?
Because I do. I’ve (purposely) stayed away almost entirely from Freud, in the original, though I’ve seen plenty of references elsewhere. I have, as a matter of fact, read something like 1/3 or 1/4 of Carl Jung’s Collected Works (for a while you could get that much, in good paperback not-insanely priced editions). And some considerable amount by his “descendants” like Marion Woodman, Robert Johnson, and Barbara Hannah (Inner City Books is really good, if you can find any of theirs). Some stuff by others, too.
(One could start with his anthology “Man and His Symbols” for instance.)
Yes, reading his later works like “Aion” or “Mystery of the Conjunction” doos tend to make you feel (quoting Vernor Vinge here) “like a flatworm at the opera” sometimes — but as Jung himself said, “an encounter with the Self is always a defeat for the ego” so that’s all right. Humility’s OK.
But besides theory, I do have empirical experience. Maybe it’s just my own idiosyncratic personality structure, but Jung’s large and expansive view of the mind pretty much does the job for me, and has for a good while.
There was a certain inner, ethical choice I faced (which would have come up with or without my ever having heard of Carl Jung); between, so to say, me and myself. And so much of what I’ve been able to do and become, since, has been as a direct result of that choice — where I could have gone much the same sort of conventional way as you seem to speak from, or else given due and proper attention to that previously unregarded part of me that was arguing quite logically and persuasively, and in no small way ethically, for a very different sort of outcome. (See: “active imagination.”)
You’ve just convinced me to keep further details to myself, by the way.
Most of the creative things I’ve done since, including essentially all of my “gateway” writing here and elsewhere, and basically all of it that’s ever been more than mediocre or worse, traces to that point. Furthermore, given the immense challenges and trials of the Covidiocy and the Bidenreich and so forth, and some far more heavily personalized things, I’d not likely actually still be breathing, without the immense sources of strength and insight that single inner, ethical choice gave me full (or first) access to.
My “confrontation with the unconscious” was nothing, nothing, nothing at all like Jung’s own… but it’s certainly been powerful enough for me.
So, if “nonsense” it is, it’s the very best and most effective kind; my experience says this troubled world of ours could use far, far more of it.
Also, your point of a comparison between Jung’s archetypal psychology and its techniques of dream interpretation and active imagination, and the traditional witch doctor or medicine man or shaman, although sounding a wee bit caustically dismissive, is actually very well-taken indeed.
Shamanism (the usual catch-all word) has been a worldwide discipline, for thousands to tens of thousands of years. Including in Europe, where for instance classical (pre-Patrick) Ireland and Scotland (etc.) had their filidh for “witch doctors” or “medicine men.” Now why, in often marginal and thus survival-oriented societies, would such a thing endure?
(It’s called “urdummheit” — basically, our ancestors were all idiots! Not.)
I’d recommend reading people like Michael Harner, or Sandra Ingerman, or Caitlin Matthews for specifically Celtic shamanism. (Mircea Eliade is a more academic writer, and thus comes to you “at a remove” from the very concrete and practical.)
Interestingly, Jung and the shamans do go together like grits and butter.
So… you really like denying life-enhancing, or life-preserving, arts? As forgettable “nonsense?”
Once you do have some idea what you’re talking about, then maybe some of us who intimately know such things here may give your words some weight.
Or, you could just go have fun debugging your programs by pulling cards from the computer. Oh, wait, you can’t go do that on your own, can you?
Our society, especially our so-called “mainstream” society these days, has some noticeable gaps and potholes. Like, to ridicule things that can, once you do ever really need them, make the hugest of differences — so it may just take a literal act of Providence to guide you to them (raises hand). Still, as always, it’s never good to celebrate ignorance. Or propagate it.
(Now, going to go do something that doesn’t make my blood want to boil.)
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My local library at one point had all the Collected Works of Jung. Yeah, I read a bunch.
Jung’s contribution to psychology was originally “free association.” He broke with Freud when he noted there are other causes of oddness in the human mind besides sex.
I’ve also found his work useful.
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I’ve heard it said that Sigmund Freud was an expert on the hangups and obsessions of…Sigmund Freud.
Would Freud have been such a big deal if his name was Bob Schultz? 😁
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Enlarge your sample to include his original patient base, mostly middle to upper-middle class Viennese and largely women… and you have it pretty-much right. (Don’t ask about the various personal goings-on with Freud and his groupies, either, unless you want to dip into something that makes the steamiest soap opera or the most over-the-top telenovela ever look tame. No, I do not think I’m exaggerating. If you don’t ask I won’t tell.)
Also add in his dogmatism, as in “Trust THE SCIENCE!” not “use the scientific method” — and you get much of the rest of the picture. It’s through Carl Jung, who was right in there with the Freud bunch in the early days (so take it as you will given their falling-out), but the quote is closely
“Promise me you’ll never abandon the sexual theory.” [I.e., psychological energy or ‘libido’ is not just often sexual, but completely and exclusively sexual.] “It’s the only thing holding back the black tide of mud of… occultism!”
All that said and understood — Sigmund Freud did invent psychoanalysis, and he did make it (sometimes) work. Think of it as the first steam locomotive ever… maybe not the first good one (think Stevenson’s “Rocket” there) but pretty much the very first that ran.
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same, even though I’m not giving my head to anyone to wash.
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Oh, yes on that. One of my characters even said “not paying some crazy Freudian big bucks to trawl through my unconscious for non-existent childhood traumas.” Now add to that the privacy destroying medical-insurance ‘innovations’ mentioned above — one would almost be better doing a Lady Godiva at midday down Main Street, as regards personal exposure. Hard pass on that all.
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One big thing to like about Jung is his breadth or “inclusiveness” of others’ theories and systems, rather than hewing always to stuff he invented. Roughly quoted by memory, “On any given day I can be heard speaking the language of Freud, or Adler, or… Jung” according to the subject and the needs of the case. We’d just say, “whatever works.”
Another is the way he and his ‘school’ or followers treat the whole subject as a sort of toolbox to be shared and understood collectively; so it’s perfectly possible to use his ‘stuff’ outside of any formal analytical process (in contrast with Freud). Indeed the whole stated end goal of analytical psychology is… “All right, looks like it’s you and your unconscious from here on out. Let me know if you need any more help, and keep in touch.” In other words, for the analyst to work himself out of a job as quickly and efficiently as possible(!).
Robert Johnson’s “Inner Work” is pretty much a two-part manual for doing this with or without the active help of a Jungian analyst. The first half covers dream interpretation and how to work with the information you get, the second covers Jung’s own active imagination for interacting directly (as possible) with the unconscious.
Of course there is the whole uniquely Jung study of symbology and how symbols let you see and reach out and touch the unconscious, itself. (Thus the connection with shamanism, which very very loosely can be said to be the same thing as active imagination, seen from a very different angle standing in a very different place.)
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((and the just-above comment was supposed to be a reply to Dorothy Dimock’s comment above, Slippery Willie Pete must go!))
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How is all this going to be paid for? I will propose that one reason the old institutions were known as abusive is that the people hired to staff them were less than top-tier. We need:
The status quo is not free, but it’s also MUCH cheaper.
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Unless you’re the young lady on the subway car getting stabbed; that might make you revise your cost estimate….. but I doubt it.
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this. The costs are just hidden.
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Cheaper…maybe? I wonder if it’s possible to put a reliable number to it.
We know how much gets spent on “services” for the homeless. How much do we spend on police activity dealing with those people?
The government actually has calculated a very specific dollar amount for what the average human life is worth (I’ve talked to somebody that was involved). $2.4 million, iirc, but that was 12 years and a lot of Bidenflation ago. So we could even pin a budget number to people being killed by crazies who wouldn’t have been on the street.
Anyway, I dunno, just spitballing. Seems like somebody might’ve put all that together somewhere.
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How much is currently spent on the homeless? I suspect the bill for residential care won’t be that much higher.
The criminal and the venal will quickly find other ways to support their preferred lifestyle. The truly needy get back to normalcy as soon as they can.
I suspect that less than 25% would need to be institutionalized, most of them temporarily for evaluation, and less than 1% would have to be permanent residents.
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Vast bureaucracies have grown up to service The Homeless and spend all that money. They will oppose with fanatical fervor any attempt to reduce the numbers of Homeless and thus diminish their power; indeed, they will do whatever they can to sustain and multiply the reason for their existence.
Glass half full, glass half empty — when what it’s half full/empty of is piss, what’s the difference?
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Agreed. How much treasure is lost to property crime, medical expenses of assault victims, court costs, and so on? That alone might cover the percentage of people who need to be permanently institutionalized in something other than the current state facilities for the criminally insane.
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That assumes that the current homeless service industry will be redirected to the new institutional industry. That doesn’t seem likely. We still have the Rural Electrification Board. Instead of putting them in charge of rural internetification, we created a new agency for that.
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Then we know the goal we should be working toward. No one said it would be simple or quick.
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it’s not, Mark. It’s just the costs are hidden right now. destroyed cities and neighborhoods, destroyed lives and day to day interactions.
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There was a “meme” I saw once centered around Bernie stating that the cost of keeping a criminal in prison is higher than the cost of attending college. I responded by pointing out that comparing prison vs. college costs is not the correct comparison. The comparison is the cost to the economy of keeping criminals imprisoned vs. the cost of them being on the streets committing more crimes (as well as the additional criminals you have because people aren’t afraid of being incarcerated).
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Sarah, they’re more hidden than you might realize. Saw this article yesterday. 40 Trump supporting households getting threats to them and their pets is bad enough; realizing they’re having to sue to even get law enforcement to investigate it is the real issue. Anyone who wants to claim that this sort of thing is rare and unusual ought to at least have to acknowledge that any numbers they assemble are the FLOOR, not the ceiling, because our Disloyal Opposition has been systematically corrupting the data. Just like we saw with crime statistics in DC and elsewhere.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2025/09/15/know-where-live-political-violence-trial-week-threats-trump-voters/
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I understand why the Left wants to gaslight us about this; I don’t understand why people on our side are helping them do it.
https://accordingtohoyt.com/2025/09/15/a-perilous-moments/#comment-1035016
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Not sure why WPDE showed the second of two comments first; presumably #1 is in jail.
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How many shooters that day, how many shots, versus loudmouths?
And it seems to have … backfired…. rather badly. Making a martyr out of -Charlie Kirk- was asinine stupid.
Anymore “big days” like that and the Donkpartei may be functionally extinct.
What, you hadn’t lost the argument badly enough and wanted seconds? OK. Dig in.
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“Heck, if anyone else thinks this would be a good blog post, don’t bother to ask me for permission, just use it“
*SNARF* (for Saturday)
There, now it will eventually have, I dunno, two more readers? ♉
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If you get two that haven’t already read it here – that’s progress!
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Modern medicine removes the axle to correct a drift to the left.
For a while I was on a keto diet, and then stopped because it wasn’t having any effect. Within days I was exhausted, sad and staring at walls. Didn’t want to do anything but stay in bed. Crying a lot. Angry.
When I started taking zinc it took two weeks to get back to baseline.
A simple nutrient deficiency, although I think it’s a symptom of a deeper problem because if I skip a day I feel it coming back.
Any doctor would have said I was depressed and put me on medication.
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That was supposed to be a response to tregonsee314
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For years I suffered from what I would eventually realize is autistic burnout. (Make that autistic dopaminer burnout! Because ADHD has its own “burnout mode” and when you mingle autism and ADHD together, it has yet another “burnout mode”.
During those years, I was afraid to go to a doctor to talk about it — I was afraid that I’d be told “oh, you’re just depressed, here’s something to fix that” — when what I thought I needed was a lifestyle change. It turns out I was right! At the time, I just thought that maybe I needed to change careers, but even then, I also suspected it would be much more complicated than that.
But I still have that fear. One piece of advice I’ve seen (I can’t remember where, exactly, but it’s something that resonates with me) is “Never go to the doctor and say ‘I have depression’ — go in and complain about tiredness, lethargy, and whatever else you may be feeling — and insist on bloodwork up the wazoo before doing anything else.” There’s so many things that can cause “depression”, it’s not very funny! And what’s worse, if the depression is caused by any particular underlying problem, whether it be deficiency, disease, cognitive issues, lifestyle, abuse, etc — taking an anti-depressant isn’t going to take the depression away.
And, come to think of it, I remember new trials were “recently” (maybe in the last decade or two) performed for Prozac, and it was found that it didn’t seem as effective that time around as it was in the first studies — it was bad enough, it wasn’t clear that it would pass FDA approval today! I can’t remember possible reasons given for the effect, but one that comes to my mind is that “what might have been identified as ‘depression’ when Prozac was first considered, and what might be classified as ‘depression’ today, may be two radically different things — and if anything, I suspect the definition was diluted over time to include more and more unrelated issues!”
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There’s so many things that can cause “depression”, it’s not very funny!
Insufficient vitamin D, for me.
Happily, that’s a cheap fix, when I remember to take them.
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Low blood iron, another easy fix. Thyroid issues is another common and treatable one.
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Watch out. When vitamin D was found to be effective against COVID19, there was a big push to have it regulated. Like Demerol, available by prescription only.
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During the winter, at that.
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As I recently discovered, vitamin and mineral level tests are, in general, fairly cheap.
Discovering that one vitamin was low despite a big supplement led to “oh, that med is an antagonist” and “that brand of suppliment is garbage”.
Big improvement.
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Unlike many here, I’ve actually been full-blown homeless. Yeah, i have stories….
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This post has too much common sense to likely ever see actualization. I do think it’s an excellent starting point for discussion, and I hope that we do see some movement after recent events.
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Off-topic –
Yet another reason to avoid social media. A Canadian friend of mine forwarded me a video by a guy who’s warning about UK attempts to tax crypto-currency. One of the methods that they’re apparently putting together involves an AI system looking at your social media. The AI system looks at the things you post on social media, and then uses those posts to try and figure out whether you’re living within your “declared” means. i.e. if you paid taxes on a certain amount of money, do your posts on social media suggest a lifestyle that would require more money than what you paid taxes on?
Given current AI capabilities, it’s probably even odds whether this works, or whether it’s a spectacular disaster.
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What have I been saying? Just another way of asking the Al Capone question: Where’s the taxed income to support your lifestyle, Me Capone?
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I remember years ago the FBI did statistical analysis (which I strongly suspect would be called “AI” today regardless) to match up cryptocurrency transactions with “bumps” in particular suspects’ lifestyles. It turns out that having a public ledger of even anonymous transactions doesn’t necessarily guarantee the transactions will remain anonymous!
And it’s my understanding that this is a trick that the IRS likes to do with individuals too, but they’ve been doing for years, and they’ve been doing it with cash.
And this reminds me of a proposal I heard at a cryptocurrency conference — you declare the value of everything you own, and everything gets taxed based on the value you declare — and if someone randomly comes around and says “I want to buy what you have for the price you declare it to be”, you are required to sell it.
Not just no, but heck no. That means I have to declare my 10-year-old computer to be expensive, just so I can keep it, and my data, in my possession — because otherwise someone will come along and say “I want your computer” and even if I get a chance to erase everything, I’m still stuck with having to get something new.
And if we’re merely talking property taxes — how about we allow the owner to decide whether or not it should be sold, if ever? And if we must have property taxes, why don’t we assess the property only when it changes hands? That way, if I’ve lived in my little cottage for 30 years, and all the property values around me go up, I don’t have to suddenly cough up expensive property taxes or be forced to move — often to a place that is just as expensive anyway, with just as high taxes.
/almost-incoherent-rant
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There’s a very interesting book about that. If only my Kindle had a way of finding things without knowing the title… There it is: Tracers in the Dark: The Global Hunt for the Crime Lords of Cryptocurrency by Andy Greenberg.
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Off topic. There’s a post that needs writing. No time for it today. Courage is needed. Not recklessness. Not foolhardiness. Not Bubbafied dumbf*ckery. It need not be loud. It need not be the center of attention. Just needs to be there.
Still thinking on it.
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Along the lines of: When your moment comes, don’t dither. Just do the right thing. Sure, you may pay a price. Almost certain. Don’t let that deter you from doing the needful necessary moral thing.
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Anyone else just….tired? I’m in the, “drainage,” stage of a cold, and it’s the last heatwave of summer, but I think it’s more than that. Tired.
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EXHAUSTED. This on top of mom’s dead….
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