[brightball]

Security personnel at hospitals who have the right to restrain violent patients until police arrive, while continuing to treat them if necessary.

If nothing else, it should be clear that the behavior will result in immediate corrective action. If it’s not, then there’s no deterrent at all.

[sandworm101]

The mentally ill do not respond to rationality. The threat of police violence means nothing to someone in crisis sever enough to be in an ER.

[candiodari]

Come on. Let's take the definition of mental illness in this article:

"declining communities must respond to drug abuse, homelessness, and antisocial behavior"

A significant cause of drug abuse is chronic untreated pain, another significant cause is addiction CAUSED by medical treatment (the so-called opioid crisis), and of course neither homelessness nor antisocial behavior are even remotely mental problems. In short, VERY few of these people have mental illnesses other than being poor.

In other words what this article is complaining about are ... economic problems that cause people to become more desperate, less willing to compromise and all of those economic problems must of course be mental illnesses. Futurama put it best:

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/ec2178ed-acf0-4aab-9141-2c17d11...

All of this of course means that the vast majority of "mentally ill" do not have any problem responding rationally. Their rational responses are simply not what the clinic and/or other people want to see. For example panicked responses to not receiving treatment for a child because they have no alternative. The article reports that ERs let some people wait for weeks before any actual medical care was provided, then complain these people protest, and at some point protest strongly, even violently.

[sandworm101]

The average mentally ill person does not attack staff. Clearly i was refering to a subset, the violent mentally ill for who rational debate is not a strong point.

[candiodari]

Since 99% of those "mentally ill" are merely poor, it would be very nice of you to stop referring to them as "mentally ill". Even in the article you can clearly read that the real issue is that substandard care is provided for poor people. This is what leads to these issues.

It is not "mental illness" that makes people unwilling to accept this, and it is not irrational. And, of course, there is a point where people decide violence is more likely to get them somewhere than acting nice. That, too, is not irrational.

If a doctor refused care for your daughter who, say, has an epileptic seizure. How long would you accept waiting in an emergency room before you would start shouting? How long before you'd turn violent?

Because in all honesty, it wouldn't be weeks.

The solution is better medical care, and LESS mental health "help", of course.

[brightball]

But the ability of hospital staff to feel protected is still a lot better than the alternative.

[kwhitefoot]

The root problem is not a lack of security it is a social problem that no amount of 'immediate corrective action' will correct.

Some other countries have similar problems and yet others have little or no trouble. In the long run the social conditions that cause the violence have to addressed, adding security protects people in the moment but does not fix the root cause.

I realize that this is cold comfort to those affected right now.