{"id":6485,"date":"2013-11-02T17:53:37","date_gmt":"2013-11-02T21:53:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=6485"},"modified":"2013-11-02T17:54:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-02T21:54:49","slug":"proactively-make-mental-health-a-priority-joyce-weaver-johnson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/11\/proactively-make-mental-health-a-priority-joyce-weaver-johnson.html","title":{"rendered":"Proactively make mental health a priority –Joyce Weaver Johnson"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nBlogged with permission from\r\n\r\nJoyce’s facebook page<\/a>. -jsq\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n

\r\nOk, I rarely do this but after reading something on FB earlier, I\r\njust have to because I feel SO strongly about it! I have been a\r\nsocial worker for 28 years. Of the 28 years, I have spent almost 15\r\nyears in the mental health field. When I started with community\r\nmental health services, I was told the patient was the #1 priority\r\nand QUALITY of service was most important.\r\n

\r\nThrough the years MH\r\nservices have been significantly cut with treatment facilities for\r\nyouth closing, mental health hospitals closing and HMOs refusing to\r\npay for more and more outpatient services. Now the #1 priority is\r\nBILLING and treating the paperwork not the patient is most\r\nimportant.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\n

\r\nWhen treatment facilities and hospitals were closed, we\r\nwere told MH patients should be treated “in the community”\r\nregardless of the severity of the MH issue. But guess what?! There\r\nare few MH services in the community to take up this challenge. This\r\nis most true in rural areas.\r\nAnd there was not training for first\r\nresponders (law enforcement, fire department, school safety resource\r\nofficers, school personnel, etc) on adult and children\/youth mental\r\nhealth issues.\r\n

And we wonder why there are youth going into schools\r\nor other places shooting people or adults with mental illness acting\r\nerratically;\r\nunarmed woman (depressed with psychotic break) shot and\r\nkilled by police in car at White House or local law enforcement\r\nofficers shooting and killing a man who threw a brick through a\r\nwindow in a business (he was schizophrenic and paranoid) and then\r\nbarricaded himself in his house or a man shot and killed by police\r\nat his home because he had BBQ fork in one hand and a knife in\r\nanother and was acting irrationally (took pills, possibly suicidal)\r\nand the list goes on…..\r\n

\r\nWe as a state and a nation need to act\r\nPROACTIVELY (and stop acting REACTIVELY) and make mental health a\r\nPRIORITY to ensure there is early identification and treatment of MH\r\nissues, especially in schools.\r\nAnd all first responders receive\r\nappropriate training to help them identify and approach individuals\r\nwith MH issues to resolve issues non-violently.\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nIf you want to get\r\ninvolved to advocate for those individuals who have mental health\r\nissues, want to understand mental illness better or find out the\r\ndifference you can make, go to\r\n\r\nwww.nami.org<\/a>.\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n-Joyce Weaver Johnson\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nAs Joyce points out, it’s not just that people got pushed out of\r\nmental health institutions.\r\nAnd it’s not as simple as\r\nTara Culp-Ressler\tworte for ThinkProgress on 30 April 2013,\r\n\r\nAs Mental Health Services Have Disappeared, The Prison Population Has Skyrocketed<\/a>.\r\nOnly 10% of the growth in the prison population\r\nwere formerly in mental institutions<\/a>;\r\nthe rest are new prisoners.\r\nSo now we have neither mental institutions nor prisoners taking\r\ncare of most people with serious mental problems.\r\nInstead, they are out in the community, getting little help.\r\nWe need to change that.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Blogged with permission from Joyce’s facebook page. -jsq Ok, I rarely do this but after reading something on FB earlier, I just have to because I feel SO strongly about it! I have been a social worker for 28 years. Of the 28 years, I have spent almost 15 years in the mental health field. […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[40,2,41,19,20,73],"tags":[8717,8701,8699,8718,8709,43,7203,8702,8710,12,7,1942,7206,8731,7204,7205,6],"class_list":["post-6485","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-government","category-health-care","category-history","category-law","category-safety","tag-community","tag-georgia","tag-government","tag-health-care","tag-history","tag-hospital","tag-joyce-weaver-johnson","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mental-health","tag-nami","tag-safety","tag-social-worker","tag-treatment","tag-valdosta"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1GB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6485"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6487,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6485\/revisions\/6487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6485"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6485"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6485"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}