This article discusses the mental health crisis in west London, and the issues within the hospitals.
"Overnight there have been seven admissions to this mental health crisis unit in west London, which means that 68 out of the 71 beds are full. There are almost no beds elsewhere in west London, and the senior management team use their 8.30am meeting to discuss who might reasonably be discharged to make room for incoming patients."
I have mentioned this before and I still believe a month later that we are spending too much money on building more and more prisons when that money could be going to hospitals and treatment programs to help these people. One question here is what happens if we continue to spend money on prisons? If we continue to build prisons the people with mental illnesses are going to be placed there, and not in treatment programs to get help. I wanted to write this blog using bits of the original article as background, but I want to stress with this post how important treatment programs are, and how unimportant new prisons are. Now I'm not saying that we should never build new prisons, but I am saying that if we look at how many prisoners in the prisons we have now suffer from a mental illness, it would become apparent that my ideas are right. Every prison is overcrowded which is why we are always building more, but we aren't realizing that these people in overcrowded prisons are sick. We cannot ignore them and it's not right to ignore them.
I like to look at it this way: If tomorrow I find out I have a mental illness and commit an act because of it, whether violent or not, I don't want to be placed in a prison and not given the proper treatment, I want to be placed in a community treatment program that allows me the treatment and support I need, but the right to leave when I am healthy.
I encourage everyone out there to think about what has been stated in this blog and the several others I have published and advocate for those with mental illness. Some of them cannot do it for themselves and we need to. Every family with someone who suffers from a mental illness advocates for their freedom everyday by caring for them and making sure they are supported, and every person deserves just that; someone who cares for them, someone who is willing to go the extra mile to make sure they have a "normal" life, and someone who will not take no for an answer. I hope there are more of us out there willing to do this, and I hope in the future we can have our voices heard and help these people receive the treatment they need.
** Please read the original article as I only touched on a small portion: http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/mar/21/inside-uk-mental-health-crisis-people-will-die **