

A father's scars - ilamont
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/a-fathers-scars-for-deeds-every-day-brings-questions/2014/11/01/2217a604-593c-11e4-8264-deed989ae9a2_story.html

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astockwell
Until my daughter was born, I didn't care about much. I didn't see it that way
at the time, but it's painfully clear now. I didn't care about the self-
assessed "unnecessary details" of my own life (trivial matters like insurance,
savings, my health), much less broader systemic concerns like healthcare,
politics and the future. I didn't _fear_ these things.

Having my daughter has made me fear, well, everything.

How our healthcare, political, and national security systems are failing us,
and in fact compounding each other's shortcomings (I'm a U.S. Citizen). How we
constantly fail each other as neighbors, citizens, and fellow humans in
exchange for greed, or power, or whatever, with a veneer of naïveté.

I don't know what needs to be done to arrive at a system where all manner of
people, no matter the challenges they face, can get constructive, effective
help. And some days it feels like we're moving in the right direction. But
that day can't come soon enough.

The HN community wields an astronomical amount of power and leverage in
today's world. And the community is realizing too that this influence can
affect more than vacation rentals. We have the tools, knowledge, and
relationships to help our fellow people in bigger ways than we've yet
realized. To eat this elephant one bite at a time is the only way to make
situations like this man's a relic of the past.

~~~
x0x0
You know, it's certainly possible to have a better mental health care system
in the US. The barrier is we don't want to pay for it. Discussing this on a
place like HN with a strong undercurrent of glibertarian fyigm is wasting your
time and energy. See, for example, any of the threads discussing the many
negative effects of the tech boom on sf; the idea that we live as part of a
community and have shared responsibilities is anathema to HN.

~~~
astockwell
I definitely agree that HN is first and foremost utilitarian. Which is why I
have every confidence that, in the coming years, as the # of HN'ers who've
reproduced grows, there will come a critical mass of folks out to maximize the
outcomes for their children.

~~~
xorcist
How is it utilitarian? Utilitarianism is about maximizing the usefulness for
the most people. The latter is the key. A system that is great for some, but
really bad on average is as from utilitarian you can get.

------
DanBC
I live in Gloucestershire, England. There's a mostly rural population of about
650,000 people. (Although Gloucester has a diverse population[1]). There are
about 2,500 with a probable mood disorder like depression[2], and about 2,000
people with a probable psychotic illness.

The local Mental Health trust has about 4,000 people on the books at any time.

Only 4% of those patients will ever need an inpatient bed.

> He calls on an advocate who says that the mental-health system neglects the
> small percentage of people with the most serious mental illnesses. He says
> that such people often need 180 days to get medications to work properly,
> and that the average psychiatric hospitalization is five days, after which
> families are usually on their own to deal with a medical condition that can
> be as complex as cancer.

Keeping someone in a hospital against their will is problematic from a human
rights point of view. It's also very expensive, and it requires some rehab
work when the person leaves hospital. So while some people do need hospital
and they have a right to a hospital place if that's the most effective
treatment it should be possible to treat most people in the community or with
shorter than 180 day stays.

It's baffling to me why US citizens tolerate the awful quality of mental
health treatment in the US - where most mental health treatment is provided in
prisons not hospitals; where only 3% of occupational therapists work within
mental health settings.

[1] [http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Barton-cultural-
hub/story...](http://www.gloucestercitizen.co.uk/Barton-cultural-
hub/story-11893611-detail/story.html)

------
erikpukinskis
Wow, terrible situation for any parent.

> “I like to believe what Susannah said,” he says, going back to his
> daughter’s theory. “That when I said ‘I love you,’ that broke through. That
> he was still delusional, but that did break through, and the old Gus heard
> that. Not the old Gus — Gus.

I do wonder about this. That his idea of his son was someone who wasn't
delusional. That the illness was not the "real" Gus, or even the "new" Gus but
that it's some other person. I wonder about treating these things as external
to the person.

I wonder if Gus thought the "real" version of himself had delusions. I never
met him, but I would think you'd need to accept, on some level, that those
things really are a part of you.

