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Politics : About that Cuban boy, Elian -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Master (Hijacked) who wrote (7349)	6/11/2000 8:34:00 PM
From: Jacques Chitte	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9127

I mentioned family in my post. But do you know any mentally ill people? Intractably mentally ill, say schizophrenic or at the bad end of manic depression? A family, except one so large or rich it can detail or hire three skilled workers to manage the case, is simply not up to minding a seriously crazy member. Even maintaining a total paralytic is less work drawn from the finite family pool. The only "decent", workable place for such people is a closed, skilled facility. And that costs major money, more than a max security prison. The simple savage truth of every society on the planet is, however, that such facilities are usually rigged for economy at the expense of comfort and dignity. Prisons and psych wards are the great repositories of epic and yet unsung human suffering. Consider that "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" came from something like a Brazen Age in American psych health policy. There are only three primary ways to deal with this problem, and our society will always have its severely disabled. 1) Shoot'm. 2) Pretend they're not there. 3) Make a place for them and fund it from the tax coffers. There are variants (such as church-run asyla or philanthropic organizations aimed at helping the badly disabled) but they are exotica, novelties. They are truly the drop in the bucket. Better one drop than none, though.