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

[SeaGlassSoul]

I feel quite upset today after overhearing my parents having a conversation about mental health. They were saying that people with mental illness should be “locked up,” and I found it really difficult to listen to. They said that they shouldn’t be in the community. Especially if they have psychosis or schizophrenia or similar.

It made me realise how much stigma still exists. Mental illness covers such a huge range of conditions, and the overwhelming majority of people living with them are not dangerous. They’re just ordinary people trying to navigate life while dealing with challenges that often aren’t visible to others.

Hearing those comments from my own parents was particularly hurtful. It left me feeling quite triggered and sad, and it made me wonder how many people hear views like this from those closest to them.

Has anyone else experienced family members making comments like this? How did you deal with it? Did you challenge them, or did you decide it was better to stay quiet? I’d really appreciate hearing how others have handled similar situations.

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!

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

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.

In 2020.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

My sibling has serious mental health issues and I would be ok with him being in an institution. He can be very charming and manipulative but is seriously unwell. He has been free to have a string of relationships and I worry about the vulnerable women in his life, most recently he moved in with a woman who has a son. In the meantime he has threatened my parents and they have now moved and changed their contact details. He is not a danger to himself at the moment or an obvious danger to others but he has been sectioned multiple times. He refuses psychiatric care and personally I do believe he will do something terrible one day. It would be best if he was locked away.

Yabvu. Why does everyone expect everyone else to agree with thier opinions. Your parents can think whatever they like. My sister has bipolar, I think it would have been better for her kids if she was locked up and received some proper care. Many people with mental illness use drugs and alcohol as coping mechanisms which make their mental health worse. There could be institutions not like those of old but places where people can get proper help without being drugged to sleep. I know people with mental health are more likely to harm themselves but it's always in the news people being stabbed or harmed and it's always 'mental health' why should people be put at risk. Things won't change as there is no money in the pot.

There is supervision for certain SMI’s, CTOs but these are increasingly removed due to the inability to recall.
Forensic services have resources for intensive monitoring but again this is after an event
The point I am making is the hype/media coverage without context leads to opinion of they all need locking up when the reality is services are overwhelmed and if the public knew how overwhelmed the view may be different.
I would love to put out there what the wait times are for MH beds (even when liable for a sec3), care navigators, therapies and those who disengage and cant be contacted are but it would be too outing.

I really hate the phrase 'locked up' when it comes to people with severe mental health issues. Saying that they may need to live in a secure facility, where both they and the public can be protected, is absolutely not the same as suggesting that they should be treated like murderers with no MH issues, but who choose to do something evil.

I'm reminded of the thread from a while back where OP (who helped disabled people access their benefit entitlements) knew a deeply unpleasant man who constantly frothed that disabled people who weren't able to work full-time should be sent to live in workhouses, rather than 'expecting the taxpayer to pay for them'. Sadly, he subsequently had a life-changing accident that left him very disabled and using a wheelchair, and he was straight around to OP's place to ask for her help in claiming the benefits that he was now entitled to.

I don't think he felt any kind of guilt or shame at how nasty he had previously been to others who were in the same position as he now found himself, presumably because he 'wasn't one of THOSE kind of disabled people'.

The care services in this country for people suffering mental illness are terrible and it's putting the general public (as well as the person suffering) at harm and it is time we had serious discussions about institutions/ care facilities were people are locked up for everyone's safety. We have to accept that some people will never be safe to exist in public life

I worked in a psychiatric hospital , it closed in the 90s . Some of the people who are now careless in the community were very dangerous when not on their anti psychotic med . I agree that some should be in hospital where they can't hurt others and have to take medication under supervision. I see your parents point .

We know they are overwhelmed but qualified practitioners are making policies and individual decisions when the person is a clear risk to themselves and others. To deny that and be part of that system is worrying.

We had similar at the bank I worked in a few years ago , London again . A couple were sitting down opening a new savings account when this woman appeared out of nowhere and coshed him around the head with a heavy shopping bag screaming at the top of her voice that he was having an affair and who was this woman he was sitting with . She then got out a photo to show us her ‘ husband ‘ and it was a completely different man , at least 30 yrs older . Her shopping bags contained books . The couple were shocked and startled but what she if this woman had a knife or acid or something it could have been a completely different outcome .

People so detached from reality are dangerous .

Community mental health services just doesn’t meet the needs of all conditions. Long term residential care needs to be expanded.

Come on OP, you must know there’s a difference between someone with psychosis who is hallucinating being out in society (and potentially dangerous) and someone with depression or PND who is still living a relatively normal life. I’m sure your parents aren’t advocating for the latter to be locked away.

If someone has a serious acute illness they need to be in hospital with all the intensive care they need.

if someone has a cold - they usually are fine to be at home with a lemsip

if someone has a serious acute mental episode they need intensive support in a hospital or residential setting

if someone is stable but has a mental illness they can be helped in the community.

All illnesses need to be treated appropriated and proportionality

The stigma with mental health is that too often all mental illnesses are lumped together and people make sweeping statements about ‘locking them all up’ because they don’t understand the nuance of how mental illness can mean anything from mild anxiety to severe psychosis.

we desperately need people to understand the difference. The stigma around mental health and illness is awful .

I agree with them, some people should be in institutions to prevent them from hurting the public, not allowed to roam around with knives like the cases we’ve seen in the news over the last few years.

Do they know anyone suffering from schizophrenia or psychosis?

Ask them if they do. And ask them why specifically they think they need to be 'locked up'?

Were they talking about the woman in Covent Garden?

Obviously people who commit violence while suffering MH illness do need to be locked up for the safety of others.

Some people who are having psychosis or suicidal or severe anorexic do need to be locked up in order to save their lives and get them treated.

But as you say, the vast majority of people who are mentally unwell are not a danger to themselves or others.

Care in the community is not usually care it is typically just mothers being gaslit and manipulated into taking on far more responsibility than is possible for one human being and then shamed for it not working.

There are people who do need to be In residential supervised accommodation (not the same as locked up but still restricted) there are others who are “in the community” but their life is terrible because they don’t get the support they need, are lonely, don’t eat properly etc, who would benefit from supported living (again not locked up but not independent). I’m saying this as someone on the frontline. Residential doesn’t mean large institutions that they can’t leave or separate from communities, instead we need units with a few bedrooms, communal living space, meals provided or kitchen depending on need and supervision as required

Yes, the dogs in the street know that the Great Thatcherite Care In The Community (ie close all mental health care facilities) Project never worked, and was a cruel, cheese-paring policy.
Many people living on the street or in other precarious circs should not have to be exposed to this, as they are seriously ill and should be cared for by the state as they used to be. .