| Hah! I've been thinking about this a lot lately ever since watching a documentary on a pretty internet-famous guy with autism (I'm not going to name him, but you probably know who I'm talking about if you've spent any time around the trollier parts of the internet). I was thinking about what the ideal solution is for a guy like that. I actually thought he should be moved to a group home, for both his sake and the sake of others. Jail is a really horrible place for well-adjusted adults, let alone those who aren't. > Can this be changed? I dunno. How would you change it? I think group homes are the right idea, though maybe not the right implementation. Unfortunately it's not straightforward unless you're interested in proffering platitudes that never seem to really go anywhere: E.g. "We should spend more on mental health." Many of us agree with that, but when it comes time to pull out our checkbook most of us show how much of a priority it really is. And that's not just because we're all dicks - there's just a shitload of terrible things going on in the world, and maybe mental health is priority #5 for us behind third-world poverty, or cancer research, or maybe we're just scraping to get by ourselves. Typically we count on family to be the support system for people like Scooter, and that works if the family's capable of that level of care. But sometimes it ends up that either the parents can't care for them and admit it, or more frustrating, can't care for them and don't admit it. Group homes are probably the best option for adults with special needs that fall into those two categories. Alternatively you could have a caregiver who acts like a family support system (checks in regularly, schedules appts, etc.) but that could be even more isolating - finding a peer group can be really hard even for more "well-adjusted" adults, and maybe a caregiver who treats you like family is actually really inappropriate if said caregiver has no intention of sticking around for the long-term. If the solution is "let's all just be accepting and mindful of people with different wants and needs than our own", well shit, yeah, let me know when that happens. History is pretty much summed up as the antithesis of that statement. Anyway, rambling over. It's a weird issue. I'm glad we moved away from sanitariums but I think we all agree we haven't come close to anything even good yet. |