This feels more like an insult than a good deed

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/1 ... 17964.html

Who knew that all it took for the government to recognize that mental health issues exist by shooting and killing a bunch of children? Hell maybe if this happened a long time ago, mental health wouldn't suck so much in this country.

Ugh, personally I am so sick and tired of people in general only bringing up mental health awareness (or putting money into it) when it's associated with a violent event committed by said mentally ill person. They must think that everyone is mentally healthy when there's not a killing spree happening.

Don't get me started on the comment in the article that wants to put people who seek treatment on a register like a flippin' sex offender.

I feel very insulted by that man's proposal. How old is he? 85? He sure acts like he is. I see it more as an insult than a good deed. ASDs are not mental illnesses.

not like 50 million is anything to the government they spend more than that every second

The media and politicians tend have some difficulty distinguishing between correlation and causality. Adam Lanza may have had Aspergers but in all likelihood his environmental and other comorbid factors surely contributed to his actions? To be fair to Biden he is not actually saying that Aspergers caused Lanza to shoot kids but I can see how that can be misconstrued.

It does, however, demonstrate the knee jerk reaction on policies relating to mental health, drugs or guns etc that it takes a high profile event plastered over the media to make politicians thrust new initiatives like they appear to be doing something.

OOOOHH!! The government is going to HELP ME!! !!

Why am I NOT enthused???

Improve the quality of mental health services?? You mean update the training of therapists in rural West Virginia, so they don't have to learn everything they know about ASDs from Autism Speaks and Piers Morgan Tonite?? So they know better than to treat depression wholly and only with SSRI's, and when those don't work add Abilify, and when that causes psychosis add Zyprexa, and when that causes more depression and debilitating pain add an anticonvulsant, a mood stabilizer, and oxycodone, and when that has you so sedated that you can't care for your kids, get CPS involved (happened to my cousin-- started off as an abusive relationship and PPD, ended, almost two years later, with my aunt spending OVER SIX MONTHS weaning the girl off the drugs and teaching her how to function again)??

Fix THAT debacle??

Sounds like a good idea to me-- IF that's what you mean by "improving the quality of mental health services."

Go back to treating us all like deranged cattle?? We tried that once-- perfectly functional people who had hit a bad stretch of road ended up irreparably damaged, and people who really needed help (like me, as a very young girl-- or my grandfather, through most of his adult life) end up not getting it, simply because the price is too high and the stigma too dangerous to chance.

I can remember my grandmother outright asking the pediatrician if there was something wrong with me, you know, mentally. I can also remember his answer (in a very excitable Thai accent): "Possibly-- but it is not much. If mental health get her, they ruin her. She very smart girl. Very smart. Can be doctor some day. Take her to library. Let her grow up. Give her jump rope, will fix muscles. She is good girl. Norma, get her lolly pop."

Medical school-- not so much. But the jump rope did help the low muscle tone. And I did grow up.

There had to be something much more than AS going on with that crazy kid that shot up that school, so I'm betting it's that kind of mental health services Biden wants to see diagnosed and treated, rather than AS. AS doesn't make you go kill a bunch of people any more than diabetes or a broken leg would. I think it's just the AS that jumps out at you about it. I also think that many people mistakenly believe that those in the autism community want to somewhat excuse him because he had it, which as we know is so very NOT true. Right after it came out about it, a friend of mine (old guy, early 70's) who didn't know I have AS posted on his FB something like "We have to overlook kids acting bad at the grocery store and screaming and throwing fits instead of spanking them because they have autism so now we have to overlook them killing a school full of children". I can't remember his exact words but that's the point of it. Meltdowns in stores and not spanking them for it like you would an NT child being compared to a school massacre and saying we want it looked over and explained away because of the AS.

You can imagine what I said to him. He finally understood that no we don't "excuse" it nor do we "explain it" with AS or any part of the spectrum. But it took a big long string of comments and quite a few cusswords. I'm still not sure he does understand it, but he gets these weird ideas and insists they are true - like every Middle Eastern foreigner is a Muslim and a terrorist, and so is Obama and the govt is actively monitoring his posts on FB because he's Christian, etc.

But, I think Biden was meaning mental illness as in actual craziness, not AS and probably not even depression which could surely use more public money to help diagnose and treat those who have it and don't have insurance and can't afford meds. He probably means the more serious types of mental illness (which AS doesn't even fall under - but it's common to have co-morbids with it though).

Biden should be his own first customer.

No honey, I watched his stupid speech. He meant ALL of it. Not just ASDs (though perhaps those especially), of course, but-- ALL of it.

Frightens me. Someone actually had the brazen balls to raise the possibility of a registry, complete with restrictions on residence and police monitoring and the lot, during that speech.

Mr. Biden didn't have anything to say about that.

Some mental health advocate tore the idea to shreds, basically said "Mentally ill people are more likely to be victims than perpetrators, and a registry would be nothing more than a grocery list for a predator." I don't think it made much difference-- I don't think Joe and Jane American care if we live or die, as long as we don't live next door.

Said advocate would have been better off to say something like, "That registry would include somewhere between ten and twenty-five percent of all Americans, and one of them could very realistically someday be YOU. Do you REALLY want to live in a police state?!"

In my opinion.

I wasn't in love with being autistic in America before Sandy Hook. Since Sandy Hook, I want to leave the country. I don't feel safe here any more-- and it's not mentally ill people with guns that I feel I need to be protected from.

I've heard Bulgaria is nice.

Being that I do not have the money or status to be allowed to emigrate to Bulgaria, I will do what I can to effect change here.

I have mentioned this before, but, if it turns out that the latest shooter is autistic [ from what I have heard from parents of students who knew the shooter, extremely unlikely] If it turns out that this young man was, that in no way proves that autistic people are inherantly more dangerous [ I say less, much less] but that if someone is tortured for lengthy and intensive periods of time, they might snap.

We need to stop this cruelty in our society.

Unfortunately among other things Lanza was a diagnosed aspie with a lot of classical traits
http://www.ct.gov/csao/lib/csao/Sandy_H ... Report.pdf (Pages 28-35, especially 34, 35)
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nationa ... -1.1291408
Fortunately after the report came out the media focused on "no known reason" rather then Aspergers. More fortunately the material in the second article was not picked up by other media because the reporter is a sports columnist who did not know what he hearing about Lanza was obsessive special interest and hyperfocus.

This is conjecture on my part but I think we were saved from real trouble by psychologists and The Connecticut authorities who sugarcoated the Aspergers angle.

The American public is HIGHLY religious; something like 72% believe in the Virgin Birth and that Jesus/God listen in on their thoughts, plant ideas in their minds, "fix" diseases, pick winning lottery numbers, kills some people in a tornado but save others, and interfere with the most selfish and mundane happenings in their lives. So don't count on a rational view from these types.

The media stir up anger, fear and hysteria - they don't report facts. They wouldn't recognize a fact if it bit them in the ass. The only thing that may bring about some change in how the average person views "mental illness" or brain differences, is that the medical industry is diagnosing MILLIONS of individuals with some sort of defect. Something like 25% of Americans have now been declared mentally ill, so every family has been exposed to the quagmire of diagnosis, treatment with highly toxic medications, poor treatment, uneducated therapists and skyrocketing costs of "care." Many reasonable people are questioning why - and becoming angry over the lack of scientific research and protocols.

If the media were portraying African Americans like they do Autism-Aspergers people, claiming that the perpetrator committed the crime because he's black, or Latino, or a woman, all Hell would break loose.

Yes I read 67% of the American public also believe in the literal translation of the bible (quite scary).

The joke here is that people "believe" without actually understanding what they believe in. The vast majority of self-declared fundamentalist christians wouldn't remember all of the biblical scriptures nor be able to interpret the ones they do remember.

For all we know these fundis probably believe children born with a disability are paying the price for their parents sins.

Too true. It's one reason I avoid social situations. There always seem to be people going on and on about, Jesus this, Jesus that. It drives me batty. Then there are those kind people who start slamming their neighbor's "mental" kid - saying they're faking it and ought to be punished. It's hard not to start behaving badly so I go away.

The irony is that Jesus fought on behalf of the most vulnerable in society.

The mentally ill should self-medicate with street drugs (primarily marijuana) so that we can arrest them and put them in prison, where they belong.

Sadly this happens all the time. Jails are for the mentally ill as well as for criminals. Mental illness has become a crime. Live-in facilities for treatment were defunded years ago and society dumped them on the streets. We live in a society that claims to care - what a stinking lie.