Senior with dementia and aphasia trades $14 worth of products for broken arm

[DeusxMac]

C(-)ris, you miss my point...

We have Fire Departments which can respond to a fire situation almost immediately.

We have Police Departments which can respond to a crime situation almost immediately.

We have NO government department which can immediately respond to a mental health situation... so the untrained and unprepared police are called. And this incident shows how dangerously poor that often goes.

[Lemon Drop]

DeusxMac wrote:
LD, you miss my point...

I didn't respond to you.

[DeusxMac]

Lemon Drop wrote:
[quote=DeusxMac]
LD, you miss my point...

I didn't respond to you.
Sorry, viewing these nested responses-to-responses-to-responses on a phone screen led me astray.

[Lemon Drop]

DeusxMac wrote:
[quote=Lemon Drop]
[quote=DeusxMac]
LD, you miss my point...

I didn't respond to you.
Sorry, viewing these nested responses-to-responses-to-responses on a phone screen led me astray.
No worries I find that hard to read too.

[C(-)ris]

DeusxMac wrote:
C(-)ris, you miss my point...

We have Fire Departments which can respond to a fire situation almost immediately.

We have Police Departments which can respond to a crime situation almost immediately.

We have NO government department which can immediately respond to a mental health situation... so the untrained and unprepared police are called. And this incident shows how dangerously poor that often goes.

I did, you missed it. There isn't a department that can immediately respond because it doesn't work that way. You can't immediately respond to a mental health issue and solve it and move on to the next one. Your fleet of mental health navigators would work for about 2 weeks and then they would be over run by the follow up and ongoing needs. You would have to be constantly hiring people exponentially as new calls come in. Caseload will never decrease, it will only increase. Plus, you are going to have people who refuse treatment. Are you going to force them to comply with the Mental Health staff? Some of them will be violent. How do you distinguish and decide who responds?

[hal]

DeusxMac wrote:
When there's a fire we call the Fire Department, and they're there as soon as possible.

When there's an armed robbery we call the Police Department and they're there as soon as possible.

When there's a mentally ill person walking down the middle of the street naked, we call the Mental Health Department and they're... they're...

They're either nonexistent, or incapable of responding in any appropriately timely way.

That's fine for crazy, naked people running down the street, but most crazy people aren't naked when they are acting crazy. What if that crazy person pulls a gun - who do you call now? When everyone says that their mentally deficient adult child is harmless and then brutalizes the MHD people that come to help, what happens next?

How is this going to work while guaranteeing the safety of the MHD people? I cant see is all the way through.

[DeusxMac]

C(-)ris, I never implied that such an operation would be a “solution”. That’s your miss interpretation.

EMTs respond to medical emergencies, but their work doesn’t “solve” what brought them to the site of the emergency. They administer first aid as needed, then can pass the injured off to a more capable ER, then move on to their next call. The ER and hospital would take over any more complex treatment needed.

In the same fashion, a municipality could establish an emergency mental crisis response system which would deal with incidents immediately, render first treatment, then transport to an appropriate mental health facility.

In the example of the OP, they would be the ones called to assess, and help this woman, not armed police.



Also, an appropriate police first response does not end the full response to a crime. Suspects are first confronted, arrested if warranted, then transferred to a police facility for further evaluation and appropriate disposition.

[kj]

This kind of thing gives me PTSD because I've been in hundreds of similar situations as a caregiver (and a few times not). Many, many people need 24 hr. care and not all of them can have it. It's SO expensive. 13.00/hr. x 24hrs. is 300 some, times 30 for the month is over 9k per month.

The cops don't know the context. And let me tell you, even when people know why their loved ones are behaving irrationally, perfectly normal people lose their crap and basically abuse them. Frustration, and there exists no good way to handle a lot of situations. So people that don't even know what's going on? No way they respond appropriately.

AND, if cops are chosen based on being able to handle the difficult things they have to handle, day in and day out, they are often not the best at handling sensitive situations. I had the same problem hiring in healthcare. Decisive person who gets things done but gets upset when people don't comply, or laid back, patient person who is too laid back about giving meds and changing attends. Very infrequent that someone has both temperaments and skills. Very tough and very compassionate? You don't find it often. You can't find it for Mental Health Services either, and they need to be both. Actually, same for special ed too. Compassionate and able to handle daily physical intervention. Not a common ability.

People in law enforcement are not dumb. If you've thought of it, someone there has also thought of it, and more. Of course, they can do better, but they have a difficult job. It's not that simple.

[kj]

DeusxMac wrote:
C(-)ris, I never implied that such an operation would be a “solution”. That’s your miss interpretation.

EMTs respond to medical emergencies, but their work doesn’t “solve” what brought them to the site of the emergency. They administer first aid as needed, then can pass the injured off to a more capable ER, then move on to their next call. The ER and hospital would take over any more complex treatment needed.

In the same fashion, a municipality could establish an emergency mental crisis response system which would deal with incidents immediately, render first treatment, then transport to an appropriate mental health facility.

In the example of the OP, they would be the ones called to assess, and help this woman, not armed police.



Also, an appropriate police first response does not end the full response to a crime. Suspects are first confronted, arrested if warranted, then transferred to a police facility for further evaluation and appropriate disposition.

People say this all the time, and I'm floored that people think no one has ever thought of this before. I've never heard of anywhere that doesn't have a Mental Health Crisis Intervention team, or whatever it might be called. You know who they call when there is danger of physical aggression? The Cops! If you hired people who could handle the physical part of what would happen every day, they would be as bad or worse than policemen. When I did health care, we called them once, and we never called them again. They were awful. They made a bad situation worse. No one else in town bothered to call them either.

I can see having a different entity handle Mental Health issues, etc. but only to take the burden off the police. They're not going to handle situations any better. They'll need a "prn" medication, or "physical prompting" to get her into a vehicle, etc. It ain't pretty no matter how you look at it.

[Filliam H. Muffman]

Portland is trying. They just started a new group called Portland Street Response (PSR), but just last Friday had a call on someone with a gun and sent typical police response. Person was killed.

City: Fatal police shooting, most other calls, not a good fit for Portland Street Response
https: //www.kgw.com/article/news/local/city-fatal-police-shooting-most-other-calls-not-a-good-fit-for-portland-street-response/283-569ea96c-6ee8-4bee-a6a8-992965418c3e

"Witnesses have said they didn’t see any gun at all. The case is under investigation."

I hope this isn't like Baltimore, planting toy guns at shooting scenes.