DC AG warns hospitals of involuntary hospitalizations
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Anonymous
He wants fear and trauma so he’s trying to get the homeless off the streets?? Some of you are so brainwashed that you can’t even think logically about issues. You have liberals on here criticizing sending homeless people to the hospitals for medical assistance. It’s like left wing people arguing that illegals should be able to remain for low wage jobs (farm workers for example). Since when do liberals want to take advantage of American workers? Since when do you want people living on the streets? Homelessness is a big problem, much worse here than other countries and I welcome ideas about what to do about it. |
Anonymous
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You can't initiate a plan like this without creating and funding facilities that will actually address the mental health (and often addiction and physical care) needs of this population. All they are doing is burdening hospital staff in a stunt to make it seem like they are taking actions, but hospitals are not equipped for it. In fact, hospitals ALREADY do more to address the needs of the homeless an housing insecure than the vast majority of other institutions, and that's part of why hospitals are such a $hitshow to begin with.
If Trump wants to create a federal program to help states create and fund programs for in-patient mental health and rehabilitation aimed at unhoused populations, GREAT. I would love to see my tax dollars used in that way. Just foisting the city's most troubled residents on the people already struggling to deal with them in their current capacity and calling it a day is nothing, it's worse than nothing, it's stupid. |
Anonymous
The point is that this will do nothing to get the homeless off the streets. It will create a temporary crisis for hospitals that are not equipped to handle an influx of homeless people, and it will be temporary because you cannot permanently hold someone against their will without a court order that is very hard to get, and if they try, it will tax these facilities well past their existing limit while also clogging up courts. It's a waste of everyone's time and a lot of precious resources while also not accomplishing their stated goal of actually getting the homeless of the street. |
Anonymous
| A 72 hour psych hold has very clear criteria and I just don’t think a typical doctor is going to risk their license professional standing, and conscience to ignore that. |
Anonymous
Yes, he wants to create fear and trauma among homeless people. We know how to address homelessness -- affordable housing, no barrier substance abuse treatment, mental health care available but not forced, a harm reduction model toward drug use. What does 72 hours in a crowded ER accomplish? Especially when it is likely to be uncompensated care, stretching safety net hospitals even more. |
Anonymous
No it is not. It's not where Trumpies sycophants are going to end it. Back will come insane asylums where families will pay a ton for awful conditions. |
Anonymous
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The goal isn't to treat people or help people. The goal is to get people to move their homeless camps outside of DC.
I agree with the pp who said getting the 72 hour won't be easy. But if it were somehow possible maybe moving from DC to Alexandria or Silver Spring would be worth it. |
Anonymous
| Schwab is the worst. Private schools for his family and big house in expensive neighborhood. He’s completely insulated from the impacts of his policies, like most progressive elites. |
Anonymous
Absolutely saw this coming. He has no real plan to "help" the homeless |
Anonymous
Dumping them in the ER isn't at all helpful. They need beds in psychiatric units and those don't get reserved for ER patients |
Anonymous
Depends on the consequences for doctors who don't obey Trump. They stopped performing abortions when it was banned and the risk was criminal prosecution. This Adm is happy to put people, including professionals, in untenable situations. |
Anonymous
The homeless have fear and trauma as their daily reality. 72 hours in a hospital gets them through the worst of a presumably medicated withdrawal, but that's only if the hospital has the resources. People often go nuts when they go through alcohol or opioid withdrawal. Absolutely no doctor or nurse is looking forward to an influx of patients going through withdrawal. But they deal with this every day. Stabilizing someone when there's nothing there to support them while their brain is still fried even after their central nervous system has calmed down is pretty hopeless. It takes a few weeks, usually months, until someone returns to baseline normal. And only then can you deal with any underlying issues. Rounding up people without a plan is incredibly cruel - to everyone. And it's also useless. I am all for forced withdrawal, but you need to keep them for a bit and create a good recovery environment for a few months to make it stick. And Republicans clearly just want these people to disappear. Trump's brother died of alcoholism. I suspect some of that hurt motivates him - and not in a good way. He wants these people disappeared. |
Anonymous
Except we’ve been trying that for decades and it hasn’t helped. Either go to treatment or go to jail. |
Anonymous
We needed a funded, compassionate mental healthcare system. Somehow that's "socialism" but whatever the hell this is that Trump's doing of pushing them into much more expensive hospitals that don't have enough psychiatric professionals on staff isn't? |
Anonymous
How can people not see that this is really such a cruel mantra? If you are too mentally ill to know you need treatment and are always allowed to refuse it, how can you ever get better? There are some people who have to be forced to have treatment for them to then understand you actually do want treatment to get better. And this doesn't just affect the severely mentally ill person who is on the streets unable to care for themselves, it affects the community of people who have to commute by buses, kids trying to play in the park, etc. who have to hear crazy threats and walk around body fluids. And family members are so incredibly desperate for their loved ones to get help they feel a sense of relief at times when they are incarcerated because only then are they forced to get treatment. The only way for the vast majority of severely mentally ill people who need to be in a mental institution to access that help is through the criminal justice system finding the person incompetent to stand trial or having been found guilty by reason of insanity. |