Legislators ask, "Where do we find $$'s to monitor 'patients' who need AOT?" Disablity Rights advocates say, "It is inhumane to lock up individuals with mental illness!"
Yet places like Cook County Jail are recreating their own mental institutions ~ even growing food in gardens just like the assylms did years ago. Imagine what our world would be like if we didn't punish people for having a brain disease?
This article is a must read! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/20/patrick-kennedy-cook-county-jail_n_3964699.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false
"The number of people here talking about hearing voices and seeing things, it's hard for me to accept that we as a society can't make a better distinction between someone who made a decision that is reprehensible and you want to punish it versus someone who is ill and acts out that illness through symptoms we deem criminal behavior. Then we treat them in a prison as opposed to where they need to be treated: in a mental health clinic."
Kennedy said improving treatment -- and ultimately, perception -- of mentally ill Americans is a civil rights issue.
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