• PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    But alongside that, it’s a fact that this guy did not get the help he needed, certainly not all the help anyone could give him. Two weeks on a ward is nowhere near enough time to treat someone in acute psychosis.

    No, it’s not nearly enough time. But it’s also far more time than it takes to buy a semi-automatic weapon in America.

    The help he received is the limit of what any healthcare system, anywhere in the world could have given him.

    The only mental healthcare system that would make America’s gun laws safe is one that involuntarily comitted people for the rest of their lives, purely because they weren’t healthy enough to sell guns to.

    • Leraje
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      1 year ago

      The help he received is the limit of what any healthcare system, anywhere in the world could have given him.

      If by ‘limit’ you mean ‘bare minimum’ then I agree. Because it definitely is not the amount of help he would’ve received in some other countries. Two weeks would barely be enough time for an assessment to take place in some countries, let alone treatment.

      As for your other points, I agree. I don’t see why American’s think owning a gun is in any way a good or positive or useful thing (unless you’re a farmer or similar). But, if a countries leading cause of child death is guns and that country still does nothing about guns I really don’t know what it would take to make change happen.

      • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        If by ‘limit’ you mean ‘bare minimum’ then I agree. Because it definitely is not the amount of help he would’ve received in some other countries…

        There was only a few months between him receiving emergency mental healthcare because he’d been hearing voices and him killing as many people as he could with a legal firearm.

        That is not enough time for any doctor, in any country, with any form of treatment and any known medication, to have made significant progress.

        This was not the fault of doctors.

        • Leraje
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          1 year ago

          I don’t know enough about how the medical system works in the US to say who’s fault it was he wasn’t treated appropriately and neither do I know what his exact mental state was upon release. All I’m saying is that two weeks on a ward is barely enough time to assess someone who’s in the grip of acute psychosis, let alone begin treating them.

          I don’t know what your experience is with psychosis (I have schizophrenia) but it very often is not something that is ever going to be ‘cured’ in that you go to a ward, they give you a handful of meds and two weeks later boom you’re safe (and by safe I mean no danger to yourself, the vast majority of people with psychosis are not violent). It can take years to get to a stage where you feel stable.

          This guy should not have been discharged after two weeks. And that is not particular to him - I can’t think of any situation where any person with acute psychosis should be discharged from a ward after only 2 weeks. It’s simply not enough time to treat someone.

          Is it the discharging clinician’s fault? Or the fault of the mental health system (or lack thereof) in the US? Or inadequacies in both? I don’t know, I don’t know how the system works over there. But that guy should not have been discharged.