PredFan
Diamond Member
I'd rather be labeled a kook extremist anti-government wacko than be a safe and secure complacent sheep ready to be led to the slaughter.
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Yep. That's what some belive. Protecting your individual soverignty as guaranteed by the Constitution and being overun by the Political elites is somehow nutz...I disagree. And if that makes me an extremist? So be it.
A 22-year-old Virginia man who had been living in a group home was brought to an emergency room on July 18. He had been biting staff, pouring antifreeze, motor oil and cleaning fluid on himself and running into traffic. Voices were telling him to harm himself. Other private hospitals had declined to temporarily detain him, either because of his severe condition or bed capacity problems. It took more than nine hours before an attending physician finally demanded that he be placed in the facilitys psychiatric unit. The same man was brought back to an emergency room on July 28 by police for similar behavior, and that time it wasnt until he struck and injured a worker who had been attending to him that he was finally admitted to a psychiatric unit July 31.
Facilities declining to temporarily detain mentally ill people because of capacity or service issues also known as streeting is a growing problem in Virginia, as the state grapples with how to properly provide for individuals with severe mental illness. The issue surfaced in a report from the office of the inspector general (OIG) for the Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, which said 200 such people were turned down from April 1, 2010, through March 31, 2011. A follow-up report found that from July 15 through Oct. 13, a total of 72 people were in need of a temporary detention order to allow for a comprehensive evaluation to determine the proper level of care, due to clinical risks. But the orders were not executed.
The search for treatment options for people having severe mental episodes is also causing patients to be held beyond a six-hour limit during which they can be legally detained under an emergency custody order. The follow-up report said 273 people were, as in the example above, admitted after the legal time limit. And while more than 4,100 patients were admitted properly over the time period listed in the follow-up report, Inspector General G. Douglas Bevelacqua said the state must aim higher, given the potential consequences. I really do think that public safety and mental health overlap in this issue, and we need to get it right every time, he said.
Part of the problem is the lack of licensed psychiatric beds in the state. The Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, the General Assemblys investigative arm, reported in 2007 that the state had an adequate number of beds: 1,794. But by September 2011, that number had declined to 1,699. Private hospitals, licensed to operate 1,540 psychiatric beds across the state, were only staffed to operate 1,305 beds, according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association.
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