Quote

I remember once I read a book on mental illness and there was a nurse that had gotten sick. Do you know what she died from? From worrying about the mental patients not being able to get their food. She became a mental patient.

Having deinstitutionalized mental health, we have not created the structure and the institutions to take care of people, to identify when there is a mental health problem, and to get the treatment to people.

It is important to note that most of the patients in Ohio's mental health facilities have never committed crimes. They are institutionalised because they have lost touch with reality and are having problems functioning unaided in the community.

In many parts of the world, chaining of people with mental illnesses is not uncommon, nor is seeing people walking around in clearly an unwell state, half naked, and no one takes any notice of them. It is tragic. There is a basic human right, which is not about just healthcare, but it is about the right to life with dignity, a right to citizenship.

Sometimes, patients with serious mental illness, just as with other serious medical illnesses, require hospitalization. In the absence of available public or private hospital beds, there are few options.

I have a very intimate knowledge of the world of the mentally ill and of life inside of, especially, public hospitals and the way people are treated in there and the way that they try to survive in there.

I had known a couple of people in college who went off the rails, who had significant bouts with mental illness.

For mental illnesses, we need better access to treatment and diagnosis.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.