Mental Health Children of Darkness

[nuttynutskin]

Anyone ever watch this? Pretty disturbing. I had to stop with the place that put children in the dumpster as punishment. Beyond fucked up!!!

 

[sailor bugg]

whats it of? I'm scared to watch it….

 

[nuttynutskin]

From the Youtube description...

Children of Darkness is an Oscar nominated 1983 documentary film produced and written by Richard Kotuk and Ara Chekmayan. It explored the topic of juvenile psychiatry - an acute lack of mental health care in America for seriously emotionally disturbed youth.

Many children in these institutions were simply warehoused and the common basic form of therapy was drugs, which didn't really help the kids but merely controlled them. The film not only uncovered the mistreatments in mental institutions but it also captured the cold realization that mental illness can happen to anyone. Public mental institutions were not just for the poor. Children from middle class families and upper middle class families often ended up there due to inadequate insurance money and dwindled savings.

 

[sailor bugg]

Hmmm sounds like it may be worth a looky loo

 

[Prescottdave]

Yes I have watched this film. It brings to light some of the mistreatment that takes place involving minors with developmental disabilities. This film is back from the 80s or 90s. Currently their is a push from advocacy groups to discontinue electrical shock treatment for behavioral problems. The advocacy sight CAFETY documents these issues and helps to spread some awareness about similar instances in healthcare.

 

[Prescottdave]

Sub standard public treatment centers or therapeutic boarding schools that house children with developmental disabilities and behavioral problems still exist. Thankfully new laws are now on the books to help protect some of these individuals. The drugging of american teens and children is definitely an important issue. My experience is that public non profit mental health providers are now offering more services on a community basis. This includes peer in home supports, Direct Support Providers and therapy at the center. Instead of institutionalizing these individuals many clinicians are instead going out into the surrounding community to provide services.

 

[nuttynutskin]

Cool, good info. Obviously mental health care has come a long way, but there's still quite a ways to go!

 

[paranoid android]

Alot of the adult ones in some places are no better. A person i know was in a psych ward a few years ago and someone she knew there ended up getting ECT. They basically gave her that option or a indefinite stay. She ended up having a seizure after the treatment and they refused to treat the seizure! She went into Status Epilepticus and was seizing for nearly 10 minutes and they refused to treat her dismissing it as her faking it. Needless to say after this she wasn't able to do much of anything and her brain was pretty much gone. She couldn't even recognize her own kids ffs when they came to visit her. About 2 weeks later she was discharged and a week after that she killed herself.

The mental health system is the most underfunded part of the health care system and the patients are more often then not treated worse then prisoners. As if being mentally ill is a crime or their fault at all. There needs to be way more funding put into it and overall better treatment of patients as well.

 

[Acanthus]

Yep, a shocking documentary. There are many aspects to psychiatry which I find reprehensible. Ie: Ware-housing people with major depression in a cold, sterile featureless environment with little social interaction and in a position of clear inferiority and implicitly demanded subservience, is ipso facto a very stupid idea... but it's apparently the best we have.

 

[nuttynutskin]

Alot of the adult ones in some places are no better. A person i know was in a psych ward a few years ago and someone she knew there ended up getting ECT. They basically gave her that option or a indefinite stay. She ended up having a seizure after the treatment and they refused to treat the seizure! She went into Status Epilepticus and was seizing for nearly 10 minutes and they refused to treat her dismissing it as her faking it. Needless to say after this she wasn't able to do much of anything and her brain was pretty much gone. She couldn't even recognize her own kids ffs when they came to visit her. About 2 weeks later she was discharged and a week after that she killed herself.

The mental health system is the most underfunded part of the health care system and the patients are more often then not treated worse then prisoners. As if being mentally ill is a crime or their fault at all. There needs to be way more funding put into it and overall better treatment of patients as well.

That's beyond fucked up. I disagree with you on pretty much everything politically, but I totally agree that their needs to be way more funding/improvements in the mental health realm. When you got homeless vets with ptsd starving on the streets, kids who clearly need psychiatric help falling through the cracks and shooting up schools and everything else in between it definitely doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that their needs to be changes.

 

[paranoid android]

That's beyond fucked up. I disagree with you on pretty much everything politically, but I totally agree that their needs to be way more funding/improvements in the mental health realm. When you got homeless vets with ptsd starving on the streets, kids who clearly need psychiatric help falling through the cracks and shooting up schools and everything else in between it definitely doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that their needs to be changes.

Well the one good thing that came out of that was that the people that where supposed to be in charge there are now on the unemployment line most likely. Still to put a poor woman through hell like that only to have her off herself later is awful. The fuckers should be sued for every cent they have then tossed in isolation if i had my way. See how they like torture. Another thing is my friend who was in that psychiatric facility with that woman was in for major depression and also severe insomnia. They gave her huge doses of Haldol to help her sleep and you only give Haldol as a emergency med to calm people right the fuck down if they are really violent or really manic or something or they don't respond well to other medications. It's a really risky medication with alot of cardiotoxic and neurotoxic side effects so you certainly don't hand it out to people for depression (it would most likely make that worse anyway) or insomnia. Giving it out for insomnia makes no sense at all as although it can make you a zombie due to it's really potent dopamine antagonism it's not that sedating compared to alot of other anti-psychotics. She has had a few cases of cardiac arrest since as she developed prolongued QT syndrome from the Haldol. Technically she has a good chance of dropping dead but id rather not think of that.

And yup you have the same shit going on up here. You see people begging on the streets who obviously belong in a decent psychiatric facility where they could get their disease under control and be reintegrated into society. But nope they are left on the side walk to freeze with no other treatment then a cheap bottle of wine. The standard treatment here for kids if they act up is to give them a SSRI or Ritalin to hopefully shut them up. If that doesn't work out comes the seroquel. Even though only Ritalin is supposed to be used in anyone under 18 but shrinks don't have the time to really properly diagnose and treat anyone.