This is a national epidemic and the story here (from the Hattiesburg American) can be repeated all across the U.S.
This is our contemporary national totem of shame though its points of origin and its sources of blame are too numerous to mention in the time allotted to me this morning.
I’ll merely state that the medical industrial complex we call pharmacology which is in turn the driving force behind the toadies of private medical insurance has created conditions that put mentally ill people (and especially young ones) onto the streets without short or long term therapy.
Local police have no training and no resources for helping people who are mentally ill and so Juvenile Hall and the local lock up are the solution when there’s no place else to go.
I once talked to a disgraceful man in Columbus, Ohio whose sinecure rested with placing the troubled children of the very rich in mountain top residential programs. When I inquired of this Dickensian character if expensive “hideaway” programs for troubled teens had any financial aid for ordinary families he sniffed: “Not everyone gets to go to Harvard.”
No, but the kid next door can go to your local penitentiary. You can thank your HMO and your local sheriff for that.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 