Is There Really A 'Quick Fix' To The Mental Illness Crisis?

Because I want to know your opinion. This is mine though.

If you want to pay the extra taxes it would take to open up all the public mental hospitals again, no one's going to stop you. But in the meantime, mentally ill people are going to need equal access to housing, employment and other services and things. And opening the public hospitals won't be cheap this time. In the 50s and 60s, mentally ill people were literally warehoused. No one really cared if they had adequate medical, housing and other things.

Now one guy on a discussion page once told me, he doesn't care, throw them all in jail. But a doctor friend of mine once pointed out, that wouldn't be cheap either, because the money would still have to come from somewhere. But of course it would be inexpensive, because let's face it, cruelty is usually cheap.

So the choice is yours now.

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Well, a start is to tax the wealthy since they have a disproportionate share of America’s wealth and have have been getting wealthy at an increasing rate since RR, aka mother Theresa, road into town in 1980. Another solution is to confiscate wealth from big Pharma and their families, doctors and others who delivered the opiate crisis. Yes. It’s expensive but society needs to take of the less fortunate

 

Mental health is tangible for me and it can be for you too. I employ a lot of symbolism that provides a 'warm fuzzy' for lack of better terms. For example I bought luxury bedding three or four times this year. I make sure to eat veggies. I exercise. When all is said and done, I have reason to feel good. I have better self esteem by simply doing these things. If you're religious, and have been religious for awhile, you probably reap the rewards of prayer. Maybe you notice that your thoughts are less agony when you say a solemn prayer; something meant, meaningful, and sincere.

How to pay the cost? I think it does need to come from taxes, but in an effort to explain, more should be done to tax everyone equally (like a penny on sales tax and explain what it's for, and show the finished product at the end of a run), and then also increase the payroll tax for high earning or more than a certain number employees, and the income tax for earners. I think a lot can be done by raising sales tax in conjunction with progressive ideas about wealth tax.

I have a really progressive tax agenda and I feel like it is doable. Yes, you do end up with a heavy lean toward taxes that wealthy people need to pay and some things that feel austere that lower income families will have to sacrifice and earn and save.

But I think most republican (see what I did there? republican isn't synonymous with wealthy...) or rather most wealthy people while they have adopted a strict ethos of expecting accountability, also value a more charitable society.

Not knowing where to draw lines, they may throw away every marketing effort to raise money by a given charity. They donate one time per year, and that is the limit to their generosity because they do not want democrats, or progressive agendas, or homeless, or mentally ill dictating their mindset or mentality, and don't want their policies indoctrinated by something that parallels or even mimics slothfulness.

It will help people who are concerned about the additional cost to hear and see on a graph what is going to be done, why, and what the proposed taxation will benefit. If someone explained what the money would be used for, and managed to simplify collection of it by increasing a penny of sales tax, I don't think there would be as much of an argument.

 

Sales tax is a very regressive tax. People with less income spend a higher proportion of their income on taxed necessities while those with more spend more on items not subject to a sales tax. I know…I live in Washington State with no income tax, only a high sales tax…sucks. Economists call this the marginal propensity to consume. Unfortunately our tax system is riddled with loopholes that favor the rich. And shelter their income.

An example is the last tax cut under T—- that was a give away for the wealthy. We desperately need to fund those people with less income and often have higher medical needs. It’s what civilized people do.

 

The reason I like sales tax is because it speaks to the heart of the matter. I think honestly about it, and would employ a visual example and a budget proposal to go along with proposed increase in sales tax.

Again, what would I use it for? Drinking fountains? Ring doorbell for catalytic converter owners without garaged parking? Or would I be vague and opaque, saying something about 'infrastructure'? I think there was even an argument in Congress relating to the definition of infrastructure and whether or not internet qualifies as such...

My point is that if more clarity and transparency are present, and if more money is accounted for in a budget proposal given amounts (assuming surplus) available, people will be able to understand and check if they choose to see what is being done and by when it is being done.

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I am surprised that you don't like the progressive sales tax. I am firmly for rather than against the government having more and providing more. When there is less question about what is being done, it doesn't hurt to pay another penny.

 

Trump put a cap on itemizing deduction for Real Estate Tax, a cap of $10,000.00. The rich people with expensive houses now have to pay over that figure. I would like to see other deductions capped as well. Talk of tax rates is silly if a person can claim a $200. million deduction for a charitable or political donation.

 

No. There isn't.

Well, there's one. But mass murder is not acceptable to most people at this point in time.

 

There's no real fix as long as mental illness (and alcoholism and drug addiction) as long as there is such a shitty stigma attached to it. You go into treatment and bam, there it is on your record forever. You can't tell me that there isn't some coding system used by the insurance agency to track and share this. I had a good friend apply for a term life policy when he changed jobs....he said you wouldn't believe what those guys dig up. Same with potential employers - they dig up everything and have services that do the digging for them, professionally. ...ah, 'human resources'....

 

Well, there's no place left for them to go, streets or prison. Here, they knocked down a famous but aging mental health hospital. It was on some very prime real estate that they hawked off for a pile of money. Only a few of those people were officially relocated, the rest went off on the street "cured".

 

There is no quick fix. We have made a lot of progress in treating the mentally ill, though closing their facilities is a big step backward. Maybe in the future we'll be able to cure mental illness altogether, don't ask me how since it would be future technology.

Keep in mind in the past such people were said to be possessed by demons and were often put to death. That was their quick fix. Nazi Germany also had a quick fix, dealing with them the same way they dealt with Jews and Gypsies. We need to be better than that.

The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.
— Mahatma Gandhi,

 

Help the mentally ill? No way. The rich need the money more than those lazy bums. All they need is a sturdy cardboard box to sleep in.

 

After all, them, the addicts and alcoholics, 'it's all their own fault.'...sigh.

 

No, no. Look around these boards. It's Donald Trump's fault.

 

Well his presidency did result in a rise in mental illness.

MAGA - Mental Agony Gets Amplified

 

Especially among democrats.

 

I don't think this guy is a Democrat.

 

Doesn't matter. Democrats are suffering from mental illness every bit as much as him. At least he's honest about it.

 

Democrats are as gone as he is? I don't see the Dems storming the Capitol Building. Unless of course Trump gets re-elected!

 

As a 1990 graduate of a chemical dependency center I can testify it’s not an easy road. I have been lucky, had a lot of support, and lost a lot of my fellow friends in recovery along the way. We all need to give a huge dose of support and compassion for those trying to stay clean and sober.