Family and Consumer Science
Abstract
This paper is about the how people with mental disabilities are treated in today’s society. This paper will discuss in detail how people with mental disabilities should not be mistreated due to their illness and how more government funding should be made available for people with mental disabilities. I will also discuss the lack of social services for people with mental disabilities which lead to even more harsh treatment towards people with mental disabilities. People who have actually been diagnosed with a mental disability should be more carefully monitored rather than outcast by society.
Today there are hundreds of thousands of people who are diagnosed with a mental disability, some have been professionally diagnosed then there are some who are living with a mental disability and unaware of what exactly is wrong with them. Whether professionally diagnosed, genetically inherited, substance induced, life stressors or a traumatic event that led to a mental disability; people with mental disabilities should not be mistreated in any shape or fashion.
In the last decade alone, there have been a lot of situations that has happened in the world that could have possibly been prevented had someone taken a closer observation of a person or people with mental disabilities. For example, a lot of the school shootings that have occurred in the past decade, have majority occurred by someone who has been diagnosed at one point in time with a mental disability.
Instead of society making a person who has a mental disability feel as though they are an outcast, people need to pay closer attention to someone who is begging for help, in some circumstances a person may have stopped taking their medications and is unstable. There is always a mental health crisis hotline that can be utilized and called anonymously for a person with a mental disability. Society in a whole needs to get more involved and maybe this would reduce not only the crime rate but it could possibly have saved a lot of lives over the years. People with mental disabilities are very ill and should be looked upon as such not looked down upon.
The government is so focused on the mentally ill not having gun rights or having possessions of firearms, when in actuality the focus should be, in more funding being disbursed for more mental health services to be more easily accessible for people with mental disabilities. For example, people who are mentally ill should have; more funding for social workers and counselors to be employed to offer excellent services, feasible medications based upon their ability to pay, transportation assistance if needed, employment assistance whatever assistance that would reduce any barriers to them obtaining and maintaining the treatment they need to continue to remain stable.
There is such a lack of funding for mental health services that fewer and fewer counselors are available to people with mental disabilities, which leads to even more harsh and cruel treatment towards people with mental disabilities.
In a recent article, Mental Illness and Guns, the primary focus from the government and society once again is, keeping firearms away from the mentally disable and improving the mental health care system in the united states. This article proves that there needs to be more emphasis put on establishing more funds for mental health services for the mentally disabled rather than funding for keeping guns away from the mentally disable. Yes, someone who is mentally unstable shouldn’t be allowed to possess a firearm, but someone who is mentally unstable should be allowed to be treated fairly and have counselors employed with decent salaries who want to help them and not people who are there just to get a paycheck.
People with mental disabilities are mistreated in more ways than the government and society are admitting or else they are clueless as to how detrimental having the proper mental health care in place for the mentally disabled are. Emphasis cannot be placed enough as to how a person who was diagnosed as a child with a mental disability and continues to show signs and symptoms of their mental disability needs to be medicated and monitored. If this isn’t taking place in the schools then society is continuing to mistreat the mentally disabled and continue to put more and more innocent lives at risk as evidenced in this article.
“A person who suffers from developmental disabilities and mental illness is 7 times more likely to come into contact with law enforcement. Consequently, officers have a major opportunity to intervene in ways that others will not.” (Ernst, M. 2013). This statement from the article shows law enforcement could possibly if trained properly have prevented some of the horrific situations that have occurred by mentally disabled people. More funding could be utilized towards training law enforcement as to how to treat and handle a person with a mental disability they may come in contact with.
There are many things people can do to help that they may be unaware of, such as; if they suspect someone is unstable contact the local authorities it may be necessary to have someone involuntarily committed to a hospital for stabilization, or call the mental health 24-hour crisis hotline and tell them the situation and see what should the next steps be for the person in need. More advertising / commercials / awareness should be more geared toward this information than to what is being exposed on the television and radio.
A lot can be done to assist in better treatment of people with a mental disability that people in the world are unaware of.
Resources
Ernst, M., (2012). Mental Illness and Guns. Article retrieved from American Thinker. http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/mental_illness_and_guns.html
