#mental institutions

[markfaustus]

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Elon Musk calls homelessness a ‘lie’ and ‘propaganda’ — and Trump is listening

Trump and his billionaire allies are out of touch with a crisis facing more than 600,000 Americans, advocates tell Alex Woodward

To Elon Musk, the word “homeless” is a “lie” and “a propaganda word”.

“Homeless is a misnomer. It implies that someone got a little bit behind on their mortgage, and if you just gave them a job, they’d be back on their feet,” he told former Fox News personality Tucker Carlson in October. “What you actually have are violent drug zombies with dead eyes, and needles and human feces on the street.”

The more money spent combating homelessness, “the worse it gets”, according to Musk.

Musk — who funneled more than $250m into Donald Trump’s presidential campaign — is now directing lawmakers and the White House to make drastic, potentially devastating cuts to federal agencies that support millions of vulnerable Americans, including thousands of people experiencing homelessness.

The world’s wealthiest person has repeatedly suggested that he believes the government he will be assisting is behind a global conspiracy to make more people homeless in order to enrich the organizations working to end homelessness.

“The ‘save the homeless’ NGOs are often paid according to how many homeless people are on the streets, thus creating a strong financial incentive for them to maximize the number of homeless people and never actually solve the problem!” he wrote on December 10.

“The more homeless there are, the more money these organizations get, so their incentive is to increase, not decrease, homelessness!” he said in September.

Trump, meanwhile, says people experiencing homelessness should be forced into treatment or mental institutions “or face arrest”.

His campaign has promised to “end the nightmare” of the “dangerously deranged” with a plan to “open large parcels of inexpensive land, bring in doctors, psychiatrists, social workers, and drug rehab specialists, and create tent cities where the homeless can be relocated and their problems identified”.

He wants to “bring back mental institutions to house and rehabilitate those who are severely mentally ill or dangerously deranged with the goal of reintegrating them back into society.”

Musk and Trump are not alone.

Influential billionaires and right-wing think tanks have been advancing legislation that criminalizes homelessness in Congress and at the Supreme Court, “and they all share this backwards, incorrect view that if we punish people enough, they will choose not to be poor”, according to Jesse Rabinowitz, campaign and communications director with the National Homelessness Law Center.

“People are really struggling to afford basic needs in this country, like rent and food. But I don’t expect Musk or the other billionaires to know anything about that,” he told The Independent.

“Instead of focusing on solutions to homelessness, Musk and his billionaire friends think the solution is to arrest homeless folks and send them off to detention camps,” he said.

“He could single-handedly provide and pay for every houseless person in this country to get the housing and support they need to stay housed,” he added. “But he doesn’t care, and he and his billionaire friends are using homeless people as political footballs, and it’s wrong and it’s disgusting.”

In January 2023, the last year for which the full data is available, more than 650,000 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in the U.S., marking a 12% increase from 2022, and the most ever recorded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in nearly 20 years.

Nearly 3 out of every 10 people experiencing homelessness are part of a family with children, and 17% of all unhoused people were children under the age of 18, the report found.

In New York City, more than 130,000 people — including more than 45,000 children — were sleeping in shelters in October. It’s a figure that has been steadily increasing since 2022, when mayor Eric Adams began welcoming migrants into the city after they were sent north by Republican-led states protesting President Joe Biden’s approach to the US-Mexico border.

But that figure excludes the untold thousands of people sleeping on the city’s streets and subway systems each night, nor does it include the estimated 300,000 people who have lost their homes and are now tenuously living in so-called “doubled-up” housing with other people and families.

The primary driver of homelessness, particularly among families, is a lack of stable affordable housing, with evictions, overcrowded housing, domestic violence and job losses sending homeless families into shelters and onto the streets.

A full-time worker earning minimum wage cannot afford to rent a two-bedroom home at market rate anywhere in the country. An hourly wage worker would need to make at least $15 an hour working for 104 hours a week to afford an average one-bedroom home at fair market rent.

While Musk describes people experiencing homelessness as “violent”, they are more likely to be victims of a crime than perpetrators. The Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco, calls it a “hidden epidemic” that it says is fueled by a series of policy failures that have forced more than half a million Americans onto the streets each night.

Meanwhile, state and local governments are increasingly criminalizing homelessness, from “public camping” bans to laws prohibiting where you can sleep or sit or whether you can sleep in your car, loiter or ask for money. Nearly every state has at least one law on the books criminalizing homelessness.

In June, the Supreme Court determined that cities can enforce so-called camping bans to prevent homeless people from sleeping in public spaces — even if those cities don’t have shelter space for them.

More than 100 cities have enacted camping bans in the wake of that decision, and dozens of others are currently pushing through legislation.

Musk and billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are co-directing a newly created advisory group to work with Congress to identify ways to cut trillions of dollars in federal spending, including cuts to health insurance and food programs long considered a third rail in Congress.

Ramaswamy has suggested putting $1bn on the chopping block for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps, one of the most critical safety net programs for poor Americans. Roughly 75% of recipients are in poverty, and more than 20% have reported having no income other than those benefits.

Musk and Ramaswamy are also reportedly mulling cuts to federal healthcare programs for lower-income Americans and children — programs that homeless Americans also are entitled to.

During his first administration, Trump appointed a self-described “homelessness consultant” to lead the agency overseeing the federal response to homelessness. Robert Marbut, who directed the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness from 2019 to 2021, abandoned the standard “housing first” framework that has been the driving force behind policies to address the crisis for years, widely supported by homelessness and housing agencies and services across the country.

But Marbut endorsed what he called “housing fourth”, or using housing as an incentive to get people enrolled into supportive services.

“Housing first” was adopted as federal policy more than 20 years ago during President George W. Bush’s administration.

“It is a Republican policy, but they don’t actually care about folks who are poor and people who are experiencing homelessness,” Rabinowitz said. “Now they’re poised to ‘other’ people to the point where they are rounding them up and putting them into camps. We have seen that before and we know how it ends.”

Trump has vowed to “end the scourge of homelessness”.

In the final year of his last presidency in 2020, the number of people experiencing homelessness had grown for the fourth year in a row. On a single night in January 2020, two months before the declaration of the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 580,000 people — or about 18 of every 10,000 people in the country — were experiencing homelessness.

The rate of homelessness among veterans also did not decline for the first time in more than a decade.

But homelessness among veterans fell by 7.5% between 2023 and 2024, cutting the rate of homelessness among former service members by more than 55% since 2010.

“The secret to this decrease is not a mystery,” according to National Alliance to End Homelessness CEO Ann Oliva. “Ending homelessness comes down to three things: using person-centered and evidence-based policy and program design, providing key resources at a scale necessary to get the job done, and showing the leadership and public will to keep a long-term commitment to our goals. Our leaders have honored that commitment to veterans. It is now time for them to honor it for the rest of the nation.”

Nearly ¾ of Americans support taking the same approach to end all homelessness, according to polling from Morning Consult.

“Most people in this country know that it’s hard to pay rent, it’s hard to afford groceries … but I don’t expect billionaires to know about the struggles that poor and working-class Americans are going through,” Rabinowitz said. “I wish they could see how out of touch they were and realized that maybe they don’t actually know what they’re talking about.”

[monstercollection]

I wanted to share some articles on actual 19th century asylums. I did some research because I wanted to see if Seward’s actions were actually the standard of care at the time and what reformers of the era were actually pushing for.

And what I discovered is that there were quite a few asylums that were more considerably more progressive and were far more humane than Seward’s asylum. Some even had practices that looked very similar to the restraint reduction/elimination programs we see today. Some had even eliminated mechanical restraints (straight jackets, chains, etc.) entirely.

So people were actually aware of how cruel and unnecessary many of these practices were. Hanwell Asylum phased out mechanical restraints like these in the 1840s. They created an environment where patients could move freely, focused on vocational programs (though many of these were unpaid) and even made deescalating patients in crisis (as opposed to using restraints) a core part of their practice.

https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/medicine/victorian-mental-asylum

A Victorian Mental Asylum | Science Museum

What was life really like in Victorian mental asylums? The story of Hanwell Mental Asylum reveals that they were kinder places than we might

People were also actively protesting the inhuman conditions at many asylums.

https://www.historyhit.com/life-in-a-victorian-mental-asylum/

What Was Life Like in a Victorian Mental Asylum?

Mental health treatment has thankfully come a long way over the millennia. Historically, people with mental health conditions were thought t

Not every asylum was like this, but the idea that mechanical restraints where not necessary was in the public conciseness, and psychiatric care that focuses on managing environments and stimulus/triggers was actually a thing that existed.

One of the reasons mechanical restraints returned and the concept of patient dignity became less a focus was overcrowding in the late 19th century This is the same issue that modern institutions cited as the cause for horrific drops in quality of care and abuse. Like today, the worst places were those where people were warehoused without enough staff to adequately supervise them. You saw this in places like Bethlam Royal Hospital (aka Bedlam Asylum).

High staff ratio was seen as essential to restraint reduction in places like Hanwell, much like today. This is very similar to how programs for people with intellectual disabilities and mental illness that lead to physical behaviors/aggression are placed in environments with high staff-to-client ratios (or even 1-to-1 staff) in order to have people on hand to give them more individual attention while in crisis and focus on de-escalation (I worked in contemporary programs that provided this kind care of for about 4 years).

So when we talk about Seward as a product of his time, I think we need to acknowledge that there were a lot of places that phased out the practices he uses on Renfield, some of which predated Dracula by almost a century.

Seward’s actions need to be looked at less in light of the standards of the time and more in light of Stoker’s own ableist and eugenicist beliefs. You see time and time again that Stoker equates mental health with moral and religious failings and a person being a lower form of human being. Notice how Seward continually frames the worst parts of Renfield’s mental illness in the context of scripture.

This was well after psychiatric science had begun to move away from this idea (though anyone with mental illness who grew up in a conservative Christian comunity will tell you it hasn’t faded completely today). Hanwell doctors did believe that religion played a role in a patient’s recovery, but less in the idea that mental illness/moral failing was linked inherently to a biological difference that was not treatable.

Later in the book, Stoker writes a scene were Van Helsing talks about how criminals have “childlike brains” and very much equate things like mental illness and intellectual disabilities with criminality. Though he does seem to make an exception for conditions like dementia (it is implied at one point that VH’s wife is suffering from it). In general, the characters in Dracula believe that mental illness/mental defects are inherent. This is why you see Seward focus more on studying Renfield than curing him.

So Seward and his asylum really are more emblematic of Stoker’s biases than they were the more progressive and compassionate practices toward treating mental illness that very much existed at the time. Critiquing his character for his treatment of Renfield is absolutely valid. He uses practices that asylums predating him by over 50 years deemed cruel and obsolete. Those practices has not vanished but we’re more associated with county institutions that warehoused their patients rather than private practices like Sewards.

[wordsarefakeokay]

My mom is quicksand

She never wanted to be a mom

When my older brother appeared, she did

She met my second oldest brothers dad because she was moving into a tiny room for her and her first

The second dad happened to be the one collecting the money

My mom is quicksand

One brother grew up thinking "that's my dad and this one's just a friend"

His actual dad he called by name

My mom got married

My second brother got to be born into a wedded family

I have no idea how long they were together until his dad knew better

"I'm not a good example of long term relationships" my mom said one day

There was nothing really to say to that

She's so unassuming

With a name as old fashioned as hers and heart that seems warm

She's quicksand before you know she's quick sand

Smiles and nice words and a sweet laugh

She makes you stay a while and listen to her stories

Then you realize all she has is stories

She'll be kind and meet you at your level

Break down barrier and speak Spanish with you

Talk to you in a language that feels like home

Before you know it you're in love and because you live somewhere else, you can walk away when she has weird days

But then she became pregnant with me and now you're staying in the quicksand

Let's get married she's about to have my little brother

But you know you're in quicksand now

You know what she's going to therapy for

You know what all those visits to the mental health ward were for

Oh dad, you're in quicksand

No sense of self

Every day is different

Even the slightest thing can sink you further

Or make you want to jump out

But you're in quicksand

And that shit stays

~merrito

[collapse-and-comfort]

Constantine: City of Demons

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

[ask-fem-russia]

How did anya's brother's help?

“Well…”

“They did what had to be done.“

4/7

[coffeeandtin]

Vasquez: A-9, I'm going to let you go crazy with this one. I'd just like to see what you can come up with. Congratulations!!! XD

Thank you!!! “Go crazy.” Haha! I see what you did there! :D I’m actually surprised with what I came up with. I had the image of an abandoned asylum in my head at first, but I actually ended up doing a straight-up mental hospital AU sort of thing, wherein Faraday is a good bro, and it’s kind of sad, but I think Vasquez was actually the perfect character to have done this one with!

               Should have just taken damn the pills.

               The thoughtfloated somewhere between his desperation to get away, and the vague awarenessthat, even if he had the energy to move his limbs, the restraints that boundhis wrists and ankles wouldn’t have permitted them to go very far. Then therewas the memory of being dragged down, the sting of a needle, and the burn ofmedication. The humiliation when he’d begged them not to do it, and the way hecould feel himself fray as his limbs went slack.

               Just because you’re paranoid…

               Therewas the chirp of his door’s electronic lock, followed by a knock before the doorcreaked open. Vasquez’s head lolled in that direction and his vision swam.

               …doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

               Vasquezrecognized the orderly that had held down his legs. He had a visceral need to lashout, to run and hide; and be anywhere but where he was. He only managed apitiful tug at the leather straps.

               “Shh, Iknow,” the man assuaged as he held up a clipboard and blood pressure cuff. “Noneedles this time. Promise.”

               The orderlypulled a chair up to the bedside, and set the clipboard on the nightstandbefore unslinging a stethoscope from around his neck. Vasquez watched him, gauginghis intent, and squirming at the idea of being handled again. His eyes roamedover the white uniform until they caught sight of the access card. If only hecould get his hands on it. There was a picture that matched the man who satnext to him, and presumably a name. Vasquez wanted to groan in frustration whenthe letters didn’t coalesce into meaning.  

               And where are you going to go? You’ve gotnowhere else to be.

               The orderly gave him alopsided grin that was as sly as it was friendly. Vasquez didn’t have to beparanoid to know that the man could guess what he was thinking in regard to theaccess key. Vasquez didn’t suppose it would help to tell him that he didn’tbelong here.

               “I’mJosh,” he said, as he put the stethoscope’s eartips in place. “I’ve just gottaget your vitals.”

               Theharsh tearing sound of Velcro made Vasquez’s stomach do a summersault, and asJosh slid the cuff under his arm, and fastened it around his bicep, Vasqueztried to pull away.

               “It’sokay,” Josh said. He placed a hand on Vasquez’s shoulder and patted it. “I knowthis sucks.”

               Oh, butVasquez wanted to fight. The next words out of the orderly’s mouth woulddoubtlessly be “but it’s for you own good.” Vasquez shifted his head, and glaredblearily at Josh. His eyes were blue-gray, patient, and sympathetic. Just thesame, if Vasquez heard any variation of those words again, he really would losehis goddamn mind.

               Butthey didn’t come. Instead, Josh removed his hand. There was the tightening ofthe pressure cuff, and the feel of the stethoscope on his arm and chest. Vasquez studiedthe ceiling until it was done.  

               “Alright,”Josh said as he scribbled the statistics on the form. “So far, so good. Won’tbe too long, we can get you outta these. Just gotta get Sam, er… Doctor Chisolmto sign off on it.”

               Vasquezeyed him cautiously. He didn’t dare give any sign of hope, or gratitude.

               Joshfrowned.

               “Itgets easier,” he said as he gathered up the equipment. “And for the record, Iam sorry we had to do that. Earlier. I never like to see that happen. None ofus do.”

               Havingsaid what he apparently needed to say, Josh stood and walked toward the door,but he paused and turned, considering something.

             “Not that I’d ever get tired ofseeing McCann take a knee to the stomach.”

             Josh chuckled to himself, and for aheartbeat, Vasquez found himself sharing in the levity.

             “If you need anything, I’ll bearound,” Josh said as he opened the door to let himself out.

              There it was. The open door, thehallway beyond.

               Run! Something in him snarled.

               But the door shut, andlocked; and he was still tied down, and doped out of his mind.

               Eventually,he slept.

[literature-works]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Story Summary:  Roy, after missing a deadline, is sent on a health inspection with Maes Hughes. There is a creepy air to the New Heissgart Village, a small community for the physically and mentally disabled, but he cannot place it. There he meets a young, golden-haired patient who helps him find the horrifying truth of the Village.

Chapter Summary: They recover after the East Ward but Roy now has many more problems he has to deal with. Where are the patients going to go and why do Lieutenant Hawkeye and Lt. Col. Hughes keep asking him the same questions?