I agree, its something you don't think much about until it involves you. There are so many subects that can be included in that statement though, like spousal abuse and drug addiction and cancer treatment and alcohol abuse etc. I think the afformentioned get more $ allocated from the gov't than mental institutions because there is more awareness and more people afflicted with those illnesses/symptoms. I would chose to fund ALL of those programs, including mental institutions, over funding war and probably 1/2 of the other stuff that the gov't spends money on. I'm all for a reallocation of our tax money. But politicians have power and in order to keep their power they put money where the lobbyists (who give the politicians money) want them to put it, and the tax dollars don't end up in the areas that I feel they should be.
I'll stop w/the political rant as I really don't know what I'm talking about anyway
I haven't had direct involvement w/mental illness and I'm sure I'd feel differently if I did. Although, my mom is bi-polar and we believe my brother is. My mom takes medication and doesn't work because of her illness. I'm definiltely not as sympathetic to her as I should be.
I guess I'm willing to help those who want to be helped. Who aren't looking for handouts and who want to better themselves etc. How do you separate those from people who are just mean/lazy/criminals?
I'm sympathic to your cause, Scott. Its good that you are raising awareness for the mentally ill and helping your loved ones. If there is a worthy cause/organization that you specifically favor, I'm willing to donate to it, please let me know the info.
In the particular case of Holmes, while its certainly possible he is temporarily ill or what-not (I don't know cuz I don't have the time/energy/desire to look into this subject specifically, so I resort to making uneducated statements like I've made in most of my posts), its just hard to believe that our society would help this person and he'd one day be able to be a contributing member of society without something like this happening again. Not given what he's done. He didn't flip out and beat up an ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend or go haywire cuz his professor gave him a bad grade or have road rage. This is something that took many days of planning and he had a lot of time in between to come out of his insanity and realize that he was planning to hurt a lot of people.
Rob