Reply to Why no Involuntary Commitment in DC?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]People get to choose to do things that are not objectively the best for them in this society, and once you are on that slope it isn’t easy to draw a defensible line to prevent sliding down it. (To be clear: I don’t think we should get off that slope. However, I also think OP doesn’t have a lot of experience with mental health.)[/quote]

I know that one of my moms friends from a highly regarded college was murdered by Union Station  after they closed the institutions and familys couldnt involunarily commit. She descended jnto madness and homelessness and obviously vulnerability on the streets.this story repeats every day.[/quote]

I think the issue is much more with the people who don’t attend “highly regarded colleges” who have even fewer options. Certainly rounding up everyone living in the streets around Union Station is a solution to a problem, but it creates other problems and is also not the right way to handle the situation.

In DC, the issue is generationally poverty, community violence, addiction, and a failing education system. I was going to say that access to employment is also an issue, but frankly I think if we could fix issues related to those other things, employment opportunities would be more widely available. But in DC specifically, the combination of insane cost of living and generational poverty have made it extremely difficult for anyone to break out. [/quote]

Pls dont fixate on "highly regarded-college"; its simply part of an anecdote, not meant to trigger you.  Yes, there is a DC native issue that you describe,  but we also know DC as the nations capitol attracts deluc3ional folks from across the country (not just referring to politicians and lobbyists). It's a magnet for people receiving or needing to transmit paranoid messages and suffering from other forms of mental illness or addiction. I'd be interested to see a breakdown of how many of DCs homeless that live on the street/refuse services are natives and how many are from elsewhere. One thing the city could do is stabilize them and try to get them back from whence they came.[/quote]

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