Badtux the Snarky Penguin

In a time of chimpanzees, I was a penguin.

Religious fundamentalists are motivated by the sneaking suspicion that someone, somewhere, is having fun -- and that this must be stopped.


Monday, April 02, 2007

The day shelter

In a previous life, I worked as a librarian. Well, make that "Library technical assistant", since I don't have a MLA thus wasn't qualified to be a full-fledged librarian. Nevertheless, I did work the magazine reference desk several afternoons per week.

I'm not going to post much more on that, just go read. I was there when Reagan was kicking the mentally ill out of the mental hospitals, with the complicity of idiot liberals who insisted that the mentally ill were just "misunderstood". Those were the years when we had to hire a security guard for the first time at the library...

-- Badtux the Former Library Penguin

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Posted by: BadTux / 4/02/2007 01:20:00 PM  

Comments:

The deal was they were going to move the mentally ill out of hospitals where they were warehoused into community-based group homes.

Of course, nobody wanted a group home in their neighborhood, so the hospital were closed, the patients were dumped on the streets with no place to go. Any meds were quickly stolen, and all you could do was come up with excuses to send to the local psych ward for a 40 to 96 hour evaluation when things got really bad for them on the street.

I was in law enforcement when that happened, and we had no options or resources other than a mental health referral.

It really sucked.
# posted by Bryan : 2/4/07 7:26 PM  

So, could the Alzheimer's be a kind of judgement on Reagan and his enablers?
# posted by Rachel : 3/4/07 12:24 AM  

So incredibly sad... We can spend billions in our war against brown people, but can't make sure our mentally ill are housed, fed, and treated for their illnesses.

Mixter
# posted by Mixter : 3/4/07 6:48 AM  

Rachel: Alzheimer's is not a judgement, because it punishes the loved ones that surround the person with Alzheimer's not the person with Alzheimers who swiftly loses the capability to be punished by the disease. Alzheimers is just biology. That's all. No more a "judgement" than getting struck by a falling tree branch, except in this case a failing gene.

Mixter, there's more I could say about that from a personal basis, but I won't. I will just say that if it wasn't for the Veteran's Administration one of my own relatives might have been one of those babbling in the streets. Which is why the Bush Administration's gutting of the VA gets much the same response from me as Reagan's gutting of the mental health system.
# posted by BadTux : 3/4/07 8:04 AM  

i remember that...

as it was the time that the streets became flooding with talking and singing acrobates...minus the clown make-up

down here in the southwest -- we have our winter-times filled with song and dance
# posted by azgoddess : 3/4/07 4:36 PM  

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