[umpalumpaaa]

A while ago I was seriously sick + in a hospital (for a few months). The doctors told me that I won't be able to resume my regular job (software engineer). At the same time I was in a lot of pain – unable to sit, walk, stand. It was not really clear how it all would end.

I got deeply depressed and just wanted to die. The pain was just too much - even with controlled pain medication in a hospital setup.

I called the German crisis hotline almost every night and they were usually very very helpful. They listened - sometimes for 1-2 hours. In 90% of my calls I felt way better after calling them. They really are well trained and some of the personalities I talked to were pretty impressive and interesting… They have seen a lot…

[keybored]

I’m glad that it helped and that it worked for such a seemingly somatic issue. I wouldn’t have thought that.

[washadjeffmad]

That's understandable. I went through a period of chronic pain and, had it continued, I likely wouldn't be alive today.

The mechanisms protecting us from non-existence by millions of years of evolution can be eroded by pain. It's not something you realize you even have to lose until you've experienced it firsthand. I certainly never expected it, and it's hard for me to imagine what I'd intended while going through it.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

The pain doesn't even have to be physical for this same erosion effect to occur.

[jodacola]

I just listened to a fascinating podcast episode of Armchair Expert on pain psychology that went into such topics [0].

May not be some folks’ cup of tea, but I was sucked in and want to study more.

[0] https://armchairexpertpod.com/pods/rachel-zoffness

[Frieren]

I hope that you feel better now. And I am very happy that you got help.

Mental help is never a cost for society, it is an investment.

[keybored]

> it is an investment.

Everything is a capital metaphor.

[ButlerianJihad]

> Mental help is never a cost for society

At the risk of going “No True Scotsman” on this assertion, I would point out that providing such services has been increasingly lucrative and it is a growth industry where new providers are arising constantly, and existing ones are expanding vigorously.

That means that the space for fraud, waste, and abuse is gigantic. I have, on occasion, perused the FOIA lists of de-licensed providers, and this list reads like a watchlist of dangerous religious cults, because that is literally what they are.

Imagine if the state and taxpayers could fund a variety of new religious movements in efforts that would be lauded as “health care”. It is absolutely amazing.

Many unlicensed or unscrupulous recovery facilities have been scooping addicts off the streets, because you taxpayers are funding “housing” and “treatment” that is so attractive to client and provider alike. Drug-addled Indigenous men willingly hop into unmarked vans that cross state lines to drop them into homes (literally looking like private homes in residential neighborhoods) where they supposedly get treatment “for free”.

Those outpatient facilities that are invisible only need to get a patient hooked so they keep coming back every month, and that’s a guaranteed paycheck. Everyone you see living under bridges and in sewers, they represent billable hours for outpatient clinics. They are far more valuable than they appear because of the taxpayer dollars that support their ongoing “treatment” and “recovery”. It’s probably not worthwhile to get them off the streets, because of how valuable they already are!

Reagan moved to close the asylums after One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, but if you drive through the cities today knowing what to look for, you’ll see enormous BH facilities going up like mu$$$hrooms, literally.

Not to mention the unspoken costs to sanity of the workers themselves. BH is always hiring and there are always job openings, even for the mentally ill themselves to be “peer support”, so often your treatment will involve one or more people with mental illness already. Nurses and doctors burn out. Have you ever seen Harry Potter and how many teachers for Defence Against the Dark Arts he had? It’s exactly like that.

In fact, the new national crisis line is established as a funnel, to funnel new and existing clients back into the “treatment and recovery” systems, because there is so much profit in keeping them there.

[0rbiter]

The vultures circling taxpayer money are active in all areas where there's blind spending without oversight. This has been known since forever.

[ButlerianJihad]

There is a unique character to grifting and fraud in the BH industry. Look at other entitlements such as housing. With HUD/Section 8 they pay for rent, and it goes to housing or it doesn't. It may go for low-quality housing or overpriced housing, but typically it puts a roof over one's head. Or SNAP: it pays for food. Fraudsters may find a way to trade it and use it illicitly, or purchase nothing but tri-tip steak, candy and Sprite, but that's food and it goes in your belly. Any cash-based entitlements that go into a citizen's pocket, they have qualified and applied and run the gauntlet of paperwork for that; generally they spend that money on well-being, but that's personal money in the bank, and will not fund institutionalized fraud.

With BH treatment, what is paid for? What efficacy does it have? How does it work? Nobody really knows. Is more better? What are the best methods? Nobody really knows. BH success comes down to obedience and compliance.

Furthermore, we've discussed mass shootings in here a bit, and I just want to mention how the BH system encourages and increases mass shootings. There is nothing like a melange of psychoactive drugs in someone's system to give them S.I. and H.I. We saw it as early as Charles Whitman and we saw it again at Columbine. Listen to the news: anytime an active shooter "had a history of mental illness" they were probably hopped up on drugs to do the deed. There's a Broken Window Fallacy at work, only it's about broken lives, human violence, and hospitalization. So think about that when you call for more funding, more legislation, more treatment: it's an ourobouros that would make Trent Reznor suffer.

Clinics, as I said, are new religious movements. HUD and SNAP cannot fund the establishment of new religions. What could possibly be more ripe for exploitation than vulnerable religious adherents and cult members (who firmly believe that they are medical paitients!) and juicy tax dollars that pay for amorphous "services"?

[fao_]

My partner in the USA texted a state-wide hotline for mental health. What she got was a simple not-even-chatGPT chatbot that ignored everything she said and, quite frankly, made it worse. It makes me absolutely furious.

I think that the people inside the US healthcare system mean well, but unfortunately the system itself is setup purely to generate exponential profits off illness. I think that the range of therapy, and sometimes medication that we have available to us is a fucking godsend and I'm glad that it's improving, but the number of gates in front of getting any of it are often completely impossible for someone who is in physical or mental peril.

Both me and my wife have been homeless, and there is -no support- for this. There's "support" on paper, but the reality of it is that most shelters have turn you away because they're underfunded and overfilled. Receiving support is a difficult thing to navigate when you're doing well, which makes a lot of the hurdles impossible to navigate when you're not doing well.

It would be cheaper and vastly more effective to simply give people UBI, a place to stay (there are hundreds of thousands of places with no homeowner and actively rotting in the UK, because they've been bought up by a conglomerate and neglected), and addiction support/mental health support. The research even supports the efficacy of doing this, and various pilot programs show that it's vastly more effective and cheaper. But hah! It doesn't seem like it should work because of the lies that have been told about the homeless, and it's not convenient to the narrative of "you just gotta work harder. I guess it's your fault you're poor" so I guess we're not getting it anytime soon.

[b3ing]

In the US they try to get you off the phone after 5 min and you can hear it in their voice, I know there is a lot of traffic but still it doesn’t help

[ButlerianJihad]

Imagine if you and 1,000 of your neighbors called the 9-1-1 dispatch for a little heart-to-heart.

This number in the USA is designated for people in crisis, and a crisis responder is going to be under time pressure to resolve your crisis or hand off the situation to some other team as it de-escalates.

My county also has a “Warm Line” that everyone is encouraged to call, but they do set timers. Once your timer runs out, they tell you how long to wait, and then you can call back.

If your case is so involved that it requires extensive discussion, then they can refer you to a clinic or local professional who can help, you know, during normal business hours.

Mental health care often involves long conversations, but the mentally ill can also chew up enormous airtime by talking, and talking to the wrong person. The crisis operators are not therapists and they’re not paid to establish relationships.

[mothballed]

I wonder what they can really achieve in 5 minutes beyond sending the police to do a mental health hold on you? I always thought these lines in the USA were just ways to rat yourself out to get a mental hold (imprisoned, at your own astronomical cost) and then your civil rights (guns) revoked.

Having been imprisoned at a hospital, though not for mental health (falsely accused as drug smuggler by insane cops), I think I'd rather risk suicide if I were in such a state, rather than alert someone who would send the authorities.

[cybercatgurrl]

it would be interesting to see if there was increase in involuntary hospitalisation and that’s what actually made the difference

[ButlerianJihad]

No, I don't think that the establishment of crisis lines or putting more resources to work, will result in such an increase. It is a question of moving the funnel and allocating better resources.

The MH Crisis Line may prevent unfair arrests and jailings. It may prevent certain altercations with law enforcement. It may prevent, or at least accurately predict, domestic violence incidents and so forth. The problem with 9-1-1 is that calling for an Emergency resulted in the dispatch of armed police and/or paramedics and firefighters who were poorly equipped to deal with the autistic ADHD non-verbal manchild having a meltdown. Also, many communities are filled with hatred for cops and other first responders in uniform. Sending them can cause secondary incidents and violence.

So if you've got a Crisis Line with people equipped for mental health stuff, then you can send the correct responders. Many municipalities have already established teams like in a "Care Van" who can connect with citizens, establish rapport, and get them referred to services, non-violently, but really urgently.

That will make all the difference. Perhaps it will result in more, or fewer, involuntary hospitalizations, but it represents a solid funnel into those services and allocates more resources to deal with incidents that would only be exacerbated by armed and militarized police/fire/EMTs.