AIBU to feel upset by my parents' views on mental illness

There is a big difference between a person struggling with MH in their own private way and someone who is a danger to society. Every time someone is randomly murdered we wait for the news reports to tell us the perpetrator was someone who had MH difficulties and then we chat about how services failed them. Often we hear from someone who says the attack was inevitable because this person was dangerous and escalating. So in that context yes I believe that sometimes people should be 'locked up' if this means to be sectioned and placed in a MH support facility while they pose a danger. That's not at all the same thing as having a stigma against all MH sufferers.

Well now you are highlighting thresholds which I covered actually. If a family reports worrying behaviour that in hindsight, has now repeatedly shown to be a predecessor to a serious incident, then you need to act on said worrying behaviour when it is reported.

That may well warrant further supervision for people upon diagnosis of certain SMIs. For example, maybe if you have X diagnosis and have a baby, then you are under compulsory care of SS or your child is automatically flagged in the early steps of the system.

Yes that feels intrusive etc, but it would certainly stop people appropriating diagnoses they don't have (borderline personality disorder is popular for this).

My early experience of working with people with MH problems was in homelessness prevention and resettlement. Every street homeless person I worked with had some sort of MH issue and, in many cases, a history of trauma, too.

Once people are sleeping rough, it's hard for them to maintain contact with services and vice versa, and funding for the sort of project I worked on has been massively cut*. Assertive outreach in MH services has been cut, too.

*ie in this case, reduced from 110 frontline staff who could work with clients for up to a year, to 30 staff who can only work with clients for a maximum of a month.

According to certain members of my family, mental health issues like depression and anxiety do not exist. People came back from the war with worse things, you know. I didn't say anything, but I thought, "Yes, and your dad had to drink himself to sleep every night, and still woke up screaming every night for the rest of his life after his wartime experiences..."

The fact that I have anxiety, and can see it in other family members (at least one of whom is medicated for it) is irrelevant. I think that the attitude of some very close family members only really improved when I had a nervous breakdown and couldn't cope anymore.

There is still a lot of stigma around mental health. A lot of people still keep it under wraps.

As with prisons, I expect the reason many are let out of psychiatric hospitals when they should not be, those unlikely to take their medication regularly is due to the same reason. Too many in the hospital already.
Which isn’t a satisfactory reason for releasing someone.

In 2020.

But some of them do need to be locked up. Care in the community has been a disaster really. The ‘community’ are not equipped to care for the dangerous ones. So many innocent people getting randomly killed by someone extremely unstable. A man on my tube train slapped a woman across the face (a complete stranger to him) on my train, he was very evidently mentally unstable and I have no doubt dangerous, he was screaming and shouting at everyone, it was bloody scary. My friend also got a hard slap round the face once by a complete stranger because she ‘reminded’ him of his ex. Definitely not a mentally stable man. When I was growing up we never came across incidences like this in our normal day to day lives.

As do I, and write them.
But hindsight in an enquiry is not indicative of a predictor of escalation before an event with media riling their readers people should/could be locked away prior to a crime.
Take out the mental health aspect, how many DV cases/child killers go to serious enquiry, will they be locked away too or is MH an easier target
It is easy to blame rather than look at the failing service underfunding cause

The very fact that these 3 men (one of whom also had a learning disability, so may not have grasped the potential consequences of his actions) have made national news is an indication of how rare such cases are imo. If they weren't, they wouldn't be newsworthy. The vast majority of people with MH issues are far more of a risk to themselves than to others.

What's needed is more resources for mental health care, so that people with serious mental illness get more close monitoring than they currently do. I worked with clients with MH problems for over 20 years, and some really quite unwell clients only saw a MH professional once a month and, in a couple of cases, every 3 months. When I have reported a significant and concerning deterioration in a client's MH, it's often been several days before they've been seen, and in one case, over 3 weeks. CPN's in my area are carrying huge caseloads and many exeperienced and skilled staff have left because of the pressure.

MY DB is bi-polar. The only reason he sees a CPN regularly is because he has to go to the MH team's office once a month for his depot injection. I've no idea how quickly they might take action if he failed to turn up one day, but that's all the support and monitoring he gets - a five minute chat each month.

In the case of Calocane, the psychiatrist got his assessment badly wrong, in the case of Rudakabana, there were numerous "missed opportunities" and failures to recognise how unwell he was. Better MH care and monitoring could have prevented both these tragedies.

"Locking people up" is a huge step, and would almost certainly lead to people being unnecessarily detained. And it's bloody expensive!

I think one of the main issues is people being released who should not be from psychiatric hospitals.

And those who have seriously mentally ill conditions often stop taking their medication. Deciding they no longer need it. Nobody is there to check each and every person each and every time they should take their medication whether they have or not. And such a system would not be practical.

I didn't say everyone with a mental health diagnosis.

I think a few things. I think as pp said, we've normalised serious mental illnesses in an attempt to reduce stigma. That's been bad because it makes people think things like schizophrenia are more or less like autism or adhd so we have unrealistic expectations of people in some cases, based on their very real diagnosis.

Then of course governments can use this to justify cuts. They can claim it is unethical to properly assess people and provide humane care for them when it is established that independent, unsupervised living isn't safe for anyone involved.

They aren’t wrong. There are levels to it of course, but the psychosis/schizophrenia cases you read about that are killing people in the streets as they aren’t compliant with their medication, yeah care in the community is not working.

Yabu. Peeple can have opinions, and part of being an adult is being able to live in a sheriff where you understand and accept that. I assume you are a millennial, a generation who get ‘triggered’ because someone else has opinions different to them.

Grow up

Mentally ill people don’t need to be locked up by default they need treatment before treatable conditions become the hard/ impossible to treat. The whole system is broken. It’s completely reactionary and a false economy. Proper treatment as soon as it’s needed is cheaper than years of inpatient. We have a family friend who is a psych consultant, she says they’re seeing so many people on inpatient wards now that shouldn’t be there and if they’d been treated properly and earlier admission could have been avoided. It’s a national disgrace, ruining lives and causing ever increasing financial burden.

You are right, they wouldnt lock up a man who did this, but it’s a poor comparison as they also didn’t lock up the woman, which is rather the point. Jumping on the sex differences when there are none is just delusional. People who are mentally unwell enough to pose risk to both themselves and others should absolutely not be walking within society.

I don’t think ‘challenge them’ is the right approach. Seeking to appreciate where they are coming from might be.

Some people with mental health issues can become unsafe. They become unsafe because they stop taking their medication. They then see other people as a threat or about to attack them. Or hear voices telling them they must kill them.

Too many who have been in hospitals are let loose after an assessment which frankly when you read about it is irresponsible.

There never was care in the community. The community never really cared.
There is a difference in wanting to care for people who have dreadful mental illness ( which is humane and right ) and telling yourself because they have one they are all safe. Sometimes they will be. It entirely depends on their diagnosis.

So I would not challenge their view. Just have a conversation around it. It is very sad for people with mental illness. And they are not all dangerous. Because some of them are it frightens people. Understandably. And yes, there will be a lot of ignorance. And worse, people who are happy to remain ignorant. If people hold a different view to yours then try to understand why they hold that view.

Yes it was

Care in the community is not working and your parents are right. Locking up could mean a few months, long term or permanent but there definitely should be something that would protect the public from those that either refuse the medication or need more intensive care.

It left me feeling quite triggered and sad
If this subject triggers you then that is quite worrying, what are you triggered about exactly? Do you suffer with episodes where you could potentially harm others?

Locking people away for the safety of others shouldn’t be off the table

the unfortunate thing is that “locking away” is probably far cheaper than offering the kind of supported living to help manage and overcome mental health problems which is why is probably easy to abuse

maybes if we improved mental health services a lot there would be far less desire to lock people away ? That’s certainly where the focus should be

My understanding is that the enquiry established that he was not sectioned because he was black and the number of black people on secure units was disproportionately high and that if he had been white he would have been sectioned.

Well you've already said you see mentally ill people all the time.

Have you thought through the civil liberties aspect of locking up 500 people so that one of them doesn't hit someone with a handbag?

Or the cost?

My background means that I read several cases like this. Ones that don't make the media. Most of the time you see that staff working with them and/or the family made it clear there was a risk but they were overruled by those with more power. It never comes totally out of the blue. There will be an escalation of behaviour before a major incident. It might be rapid in rare cases, but it is always there.

I think there is a massive jump from what used to happen around mental illness and this shift to community led care. I grew up in a part of the country that was heavily involved in inpatient mental health care, one part was an asylum turned hospital and others rehabilitation and eventual outpatient care. Listening to my grandparents and looking at history all people were locked up for the slightest thing including learning disabilities. Women would have children, develop what we now know to be PPD and PPP and never let out. I don't think a return to that is right but I think there is no middle ground really for those who need additional support or are flagged as a potential danger

Yes, because it shows her impulse control is non-existant to the point she attacks strangers. Shall we wait until she seriously hurts one?

You know because you have seen it in the media? Or read the full enquiry that gives context and dates.
In the Calocane case the Dr said he could kill someone which he then said was a possibility rather than an indication of intent in 2020 the attacks happened in 2023
By that reasoning we could all be locked away in case we might possibly kill someone