Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/2013 6:54 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:


Tightening state budgets have widened the gap in available beds. In the
wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that claimed 32 lives,
Virginia’s legislature took measures to revamp the emergency-evaluation
processes, updated the criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment
and raised state funding for community mental-health services. But
according to a report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness,
Virginia’s overall state mental-health budget decreased $37.7 million
dollars from $424.3 million to $386.6 million between fiscal years 2009
and 2012.

“The consequences of not providing treatment should demonstrate the
importance of the need for it,” says Kristina Ragosta, director of
advocacy at the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Most people with mental
illness are no more violent than the general population, but when we
talk about people with untreated mental illness, they are at greater
risk of committing violent acts.”



Even the private facilities are tough to get into right away. They are
usually full and there's often a waiting period for a bed. It's hard
because it takes a herculean effort by friends and family to convince an
addict that they need help and even a day's delay can result in the
person going back into denial mode and refusing help.

The situation I am familiar with took several attempts over a 2 year
period to finally get the person into rehab. The first time he agreed
to go and his friends got him into a facility in Boston. He stayed
overnight and was evaluated by a shrink the next day. The shrink
determined he was suffering from anxiety and depression and prescribed
some pills to make him feel better. All it did was make matters worse
because he left the facility the next day, now armed with a prescription
anti-depressants along with his alcohol addiction.

When he finally hit "rock bottom", he still wouldn't admit he had a
problem. He was now drinking plus taking some over-the-counter
medication that, when combined with booze, produced a "high" similar to
the anti-depressant drugs the shrink had prescribed. He was a mess.

Some of his friends finally got him into another 5 day de-tox.
Temporarily sober, he left and by the next afternoon was passed out from
drinking again. That was when we became actively involved in trying to
get him some help but he continued to deny there was any problem.

His personality had totally changed ... truly out of his mind, he had
lost his job and was living in a shed in a friend's backyard.

The next Saturday he was transported to a hospital for yet another
overnight de-tox after being found by the police on a beach with booze
and pills.

The hospital discharged him the next day and he immediately hit the
booze and pills again.

On Sunday I visited to check up on him and found him laying unconscious
and having difficulty breathing. Called 911 and back to the hospital he
went. One of the cops told me that I should call the hospital and
request that he have a psychiatric evaluation following the de-tox
period and before he was released. He explained the "involuntary
commitment" procedure for rehab in a state facility (which happens to be
run in state prisons).

I did as he suggested. The doc who conducted the evaluation called me
the next morning and said that based on her observation she could *not*
recommend involuntary commitment because she determined he was not an
immediate threat to himself or others. She and I had quite a go-around
about that, but she was patient with me and explained how the law works
in the case of a court ordered commitment to rehab.

Meanwhile, we had located a private facility who could take him but he
had to agree to go within 24 hours, otherwise the bed would go to the
next person on the list.

So, I lied to him. I told him that I had all the paperwork and
recommendations required for a court ordered, 30 day involuntary
commitment to a state re-hab facility. I explained it would be a
mandatory 30 day stay at a minimum. "Or", I said, "You can go to a
private facility voluntarily and you can leave anytime you want if you
don't like it."

It still took much convincing and we now only had about 10 hours left
before he would lose his spot in the private facility. At one point it
got pretty testy and I thought things would get physical. He continued
to refuse to go, so I told him that I had no choice and would make the
phone call to have the police pick him up for transport to the state
facility.

That's what it took to get him to finally agree to enter re-hab at the
private facility. He still didn't go cheerfully, but he went and has
been clean since. The fog in his head has cleared and he has reverted
back to the decent, considerate person that we and others knew him to
be.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/2013 6:34 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
Your comment that because the young man's father is a state senator, a
room would automatically be made available is just more of your
uninformed nonsense.

The reality is, many of the "facts" of this sad case are still unknown.




--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Lack of facts hasn't stopped you from jumping to conclusions, in the past.

--
Americans deserve better.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/2013 6:54 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:
On 11/19/13, 10:18 PM, Mr. Luddite wrote:


On 11/19/2013 8:47 PM, wrote:

On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 19:41:29 -0500, BAR wrote:


The sad thing is that the kid, the one who offed himself, was
released because they didn't
have a bed in a pshyc facility available for him. I guess closing
down all of the mental
healht care facilities and releasing all of the nut jobs in the 70's
served its purpose.

That was mostly caused by a series of cases where the courts decided
involuntary commitment equated to depriving a person of liberty and
could only be imposed by due process. (14th amendment).
Subsequent laws that defined "evaluations" further restricted exactly
how long someone can be held with or without a court order.



We don't know the details of this sad event, so this is pure speculation
on my part, but it wouldn't surprise me if drug and/or alcohol addiction
is involved with Gus (the son) still in total denial.

The early reports indicate he had been released from an area hospital
Monday following a mental health evaluation. That could also have been
an overnight "detox" period followed by the mental health evaluation.

Getting a court order for involuntary commitment is difficult. Laws
protect the rights of the person in question. A shrink's evaluation
that the person "could" or "might" hurt himself or others is not
sufficient in itself to cause a judge to order an involuntary
commitment. The person has to actually hurt him/herself (attempt
suicide) or cause injury to another person in order to be involuntarily
committed in most circumstances. This was explained to me last year
when I was involved in getting someone some help for severe alcoholism.
The fact that the person in question had a blood alcohol level that is
considered "lethal" (450) and had been driving a car in a reckless
manner (endangering others) still wasn't sufficient. I was
flabbergasted to learn this, but that's the law.

If the person in question is still in a state of denial of their
addiction, but hasn't actually hurt him/herself or anyone else, it's
tough to have them involuntarily committed.

My speculation is that this may be the case in this situation. If Gus
had been determined to be an *immediate* threat to himself or others by
virtue of demonstrated action, a bed would have been found.


I would guess there are a couple of detox facilities out there in rural
Virginia, but no real psych hospital. The dad had to be flown to
Charlottesville for treatment of his knife wounds, which tells me there
isn't even much of a general hospital out there. It's a lightly
populated county.

Here's a bit from another news report:


Streeting...is an issue Virginia has struggled with before. In 2011,
Virginia inspector general G. Douglas Bevelacqua released a report
chastising the state for turning away in a month an estimated 200
patients determined to be a threat to themselves or others who met the
criteria for a temporary detention, only because state facilities lacked
the room to hold them. Twenty-three of Virginia’s 40 community-services
boards acknowledged that “streeting” occurred at their facilities.

“I wouldn’t say this happens every day, but it’s more common than we’d
like for it to be,” Mary Ann Bergeron, the executive director of the
Virginia Association of Community Services Board, told the Washington Post.

Under Virginia’s emergency-custody-order process, the family of a
patient petitions a magistrate to order an evaluation, and medical staff
have a four-hour window to decide whether someone should be committed,
according to Cropper, who declined to speak about the specifics of the
Deeds case out of respect for the family’s privacy. The clock starts
when a sheriff picks up the patient and brings him or her in for
clinical evaluation. Once the evaluation is complete, physicians make a
recommendation to the magistrate. If the magistrate approves, medical
staff then search for an available hospital bed.

It all has to happen during the four-hour time frame. “We can sometimes
get an extension of two hours on that, but beyond the six hours we
cannot. So if we don’t find a bed within six hours, then an individual
would have to be released. We can’t keep them,” says Cropper.

The availability of inpatient psychiatric care has decreased nationally
in recent years. Research from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a national
nonprofit focused on eliminating barriers to treatment of severe mental
illness, found that the number of state psychiatric beds decreased
nationwide by 14% between 2005 and 2010. In 2005 there were 50,509 state
psychiatric beds nationwide, and in 2010 there were 43,318. It’s
estimated that a person with severe mental illness is three times more
likely to be in a state prison than a psychiatric hospital.

Tightening state budgets have widened the gap in available beds. In the
wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that claimed 32 lives,
Virginia’s legislature took measures to revamp the emergency-evaluation
processes, updated the criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment
and raised state funding for community mental-health services. But
according to a report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness,
Virginia’s overall state mental-health budget decreased $37.7 million
dollars from $424.3 million to $386.6 million between fiscal years 2009
and 2012.

“The consequences of not providing treatment should demonstrate the
importance of the need for it,” says Kristina Ragosta, director of
advocacy at the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Most people with mental
illness are no more violent than the general population, but when we
talk about people with untreated mental illness, they are at greater
risk of committing violent acts.”




Your mental health expert got her degree from a catholic girls liberal
arts school. But I suppose she's as qualified to diagnose and treat
mental illness as most of the quacks out there who release dangerous
head cases back into society, declaring them cured or rehabilitated.

--
Americans deserve better.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 9:13 AM, Mr. Luddite wrote:
On 11/20/2013 6:54 AM, F.O.A.D. wrote:


Tightening state budgets have widened the gap in available beds. In the
wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting that claimed 32 lives,
Virginia’s legislature took measures to revamp the emergency-evaluation
processes, updated the criteria for involuntary psychiatric commitment
and raised state funding for community mental-health services. But
according to a report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness,
Virginia’s overall state mental-health budget decreased $37.7 million
dollars from $424.3 million to $386.6 million between fiscal years 2009
and 2012.

“The consequences of not providing treatment should demonstrate the
importance of the need for it,” says Kristina Ragosta, director of
advocacy at the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Most people with mental
illness are no more violent than the general population, but when we
talk about people with untreated mental illness, they are at greater
risk of committing violent acts.”



Even the private facilities are tough to get into right away. They are
usually full and there's often a waiting period for a bed. It's hard
because it takes a herculean effort by friends and family to convince an
addict that they need help and even a day's delay can result in the
person going back into denial mode and refusing help.

The situation I am familiar with took several attempts over a 2 year
period to finally get the person into rehab. The first time he agreed
to go and his friends got him into a facility in Boston. He stayed
overnight and was evaluated by a shrink the next day. The shrink
determined he was suffering from anxiety and depression and prescribed
some pills to make him feel better. All it did was make matters worse
because he left the facility the next day, now armed with a prescription
anti-depressants along with his alcohol addiction.

When he finally hit "rock bottom", he still wouldn't admit he had a
problem. He was now drinking plus taking some over-the-counter
medication that, when combined with booze, produced a "high" similar to
the anti-depressant drugs the shrink had prescribed. He was a mess.

Some of his friends finally got him into another 5 day de-tox.
Temporarily sober, he left and by the next afternoon was passed out from
drinking again. That was when we became actively involved in trying to
get him some help but he continued to deny there was any problem.

His personality had totally changed ... truly out of his mind, he had
lost his job and was living in a shed in a friend's backyard.

The next Saturday he was transported to a hospital for yet another
overnight de-tox after being found by the police on a beach with booze
and pills.

The hospital discharged him the next day and he immediately hit the
booze and pills again.

On Sunday I visited to check up on him and found him laying unconscious
and having difficulty breathing. Called 911 and back to the hospital he
went. One of the cops told me that I should call the hospital and
request that he have a psychiatric evaluation following the de-tox
period and before he was released. He explained the "involuntary
commitment" procedure for rehab in a state facility (which happens to be
run in state prisons).

I did as he suggested. The doc who conducted the evaluation called me
the next morning and said that based on her observation she could *not*
recommend involuntary commitment because she determined he was not an
immediate threat to himself or others. She and I had quite a go-around
about that, but she was patient with me and explained how the law works
in the case of a court ordered commitment to rehab.

Meanwhile, we had located a private facility who could take him but he
had to agree to go within 24 hours, otherwise the bed would go to the
next person on the list.

So, I lied to him. I told him that I had all the paperwork and
recommendations required for a court ordered, 30 day involuntary
commitment to a state re-hab facility. I explained it would be a
mandatory 30 day stay at a minimum. "Or", I said, "You can go to a
private facility voluntarily and you can leave anytime you want if you
don't like it."

It still took much convincing and we now only had about 10 hours left
before he would lose his spot in the private facility. At one point it
got pretty testy and I thought things would get physical. He continued
to refuse to go, so I told him that I had no choice and would make the
phone call to have the police pick him up for transport to the state
facility.

That's what it took to get him to finally agree to enter re-hab at the
private facility. He still didn't go cheerfully, but he went and has
been clean since. The fog in his head has cleared and he has reverted
back to the decent, considerate person that we and others knew him to be.






You definitely get the Good Scout award.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 11:52 AM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 06:43:54 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/19/13, 9:50 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 21:32:30 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/19/13, 8:53 PM, wrote:
On Tue, 19 Nov 2013 20:14:56 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/19/13, 8:09 PM, F.O.A.D. wrote:

CNN reports:

The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported Tuesday that he had been given a
mental health evaluation under an emergency custody order Monday, but
was released because no psychiatric bed could be located across a wide
area of western Virginia, Dennis Cropper, executive director of the
Rockbridge Area Community Services Board, told the newspaper.

Didn't you also post that Cropper was softening on that story?


No. But his later comments didn't reference that.

"Crooper released a statement late Tuesday which did not confirm what
he told the Times-Dispatch about Deeds' exam or a lack of available
beds, but described the process for holding someone under an emergency
custody order (ECO)":

That makes it sound like the son checked himself out


It doesn't sound that way at all. What it sounds like is that the later
statement simply didn't reference the earlier statement.

Would it be a surprise to you to learn that a bed in a psych facility
wouldn't be immediately available in that part of rural Virginia? They
'coptered the dad to Charlottesville, pretty much a two hour car drive
away because there wasn't a hospital near where the family lived that
was capable of handling the case. I wonder if that part of Virginia has
much more than a couple of crappy facilities for treating substance
abusers.

Additionally, as I pointed out in another post, Governor McDonnell and
the Virginia legislature made drastic cuts to the state's budget for
psychiatric hospital beds, and those cuts may well have impacted what
might have been available in a private psych hospital or at least a
general hospital that was equipped to handle psych

If this guy really wanted treatment, they could have driven him to
Charlottesville, Richmond or the DC area..




"We" don't know the dead guy's mental health history or his family
dynamics or what was coursing through his mind before or during the
attack. Life isn't as black or white as you constantly try to paint it.


--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 12:10 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 07:07:06 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

A spokesperson for the facility said the same thing on CNN tonight
along with the thing Harry posted about how the Va law limits the
evaluation" to 6 hours.

It certainly sounds like this guy wanted to leave and they couldn't
hold him.

I will agree with Harry that we have a huge hole in the way we deal
with people with mental problems and I think those laws have a lot to
do with it. I am not sure simply drugging them and warehousing them in
a "cuckoo's nest" style facility is the way to go either.

As I have talked about before, I have a neighbor going through this
with their son. I do not see a good end to that either.


Did someone other than you mention "drugging them and warehousing" them?

What else do they do in cases of true mental illness?
They can certainly find the right cocktail of drugs to make someone
seem somewhat normal but that cocktail need to be constantly monitored
and adjusted. Then you have the problem that the patient simply stops
taking the drugs.

The flip side of that are the people with addiction problems. We
really have not come up with any long term plan to deal with those
people. You can dry them out and release them but most are back
abusing something pretty quickly.


True mental illness? Interesting choice of words. Drugs, therapy,
compassion, assistance can help many of those with "true mental illness"
lead better lives. And many people with addiction problems can
be helped out of their addictions and back to normal lives.

You're too quick to discard your fellow human beings who are suffering.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 12:12 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:33:56 -0500, BAR wrote:

I question why a guy with a gun would stab someone.

It sounds like the police are trying to relieve the father's consciousness because he
actually killed his son.

That is my guess too but we may never know.


Uh-huh. Right. Of course.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 12:46 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:22:00 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/20/13, 12:10 PM, wrote:

Did someone other than you mention "drugging them and warehousing" them?

What else do they do in cases of true mental illness?
They can certainly find the right cocktail of drugs to make someone
seem somewhat normal but that cocktail need to be constantly monitored
and adjusted. Then you have the problem that the patient simply stops
taking the drugs.

The flip side of that are the people with addiction problems. We
really have not come up with any long term plan to deal with those
people. You can dry them out and release them but most are back
abusing something pretty quickly.


True mental illness? Interesting choice of words. Drugs, therapy,
compassion, assistance can help many of those with "true mental illness"
lead better lives. And many people with addiction problems can
be helped out of their addictions and back to normal lives.

You're too quick to discard your fellow human beings who are suffering.

I guess I have just seen too many system failures.

Your wife must just assume anyone who leaves her care is "cured".


I doubt it.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 12:48 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:23:26 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/20/13, 12:12 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:33:56 -0500, BAR wrote:

I question why a guy with a gun would stab someone.

It sounds like the police are trying to relieve the father's consciousness because he
actually killed his son.

That is my guess too but we may never know.


Uh-huh. Right. Of course.

There is only one witness.

I wasn't referring to the fact that only one of the two people in this
tragedy is alive but to the assumption that the father shot and killed
his son.

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.

Former Virginia Gubernatorial Candidate Assaulted in Home
 

On 11/20/13, 3:28 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 14:19:54 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/20/13, 12:48 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 12:23:26 -0500, "F.O.A.D." wrote:

On 11/20/13, 12:12 PM, wrote:
On Wed, 20 Nov 2013 08:33:56 -0500, BAR wrote:

I question why a guy with a gun would stab someone.

It sounds like the police are trying to relieve the father's consciousness because he
actually killed his son.

That is my guess too but we may never know.


Uh-huh. Right. Of course.

There is only one witness.

I wasn't referring to the fact that only one of the two people in this
tragedy is alive but to the assumption that the father shot and killed
his son.

But he is the only one who knows for sure.

I could understand if the cops did not really investigate this that
closely. There is nothing to be gained by putting the gun in the dad's
hand


You mean, shooting someone who stabbed you multiple times is
justification for standing your ground?

--
Religion: together we can find the cure.