This article by Natasha Tracy in Huffington Post spells it out, folks: the menace that every parent and caretaker of a mentally ill victim has dreaded since Donald Trump (and Paul Ryan and others before him) gained power in national Republican politics. Our helpless, blameless charges are being pushed to the edge of a precipice.
So much of the money needed to combat serious mental illness and safeguard its victims is enfolded into the Affordable Care Act. Its repeal–perhaps not likely, but eminently possible–would be tantamount to a brutal eviction notice slapped on the millions of people who now live in some degree of humane circumstances thanks to mental hospitals, community care centers and other forms of supervision and medication. Back into the streets. Back into the mercies of predators. Back into deepening psychosis unchecked by medications and counseling. Back into their centuries-long prospects of incomprehension and early death.
It is clear that Donald Trump has not paid a seconds’ worth of attention to the realities of serious mental illness, and this fact increases the likelihood of a reign of terror upon these victims. In this, he is hardly alone among politicians. Recall that only a few weeks ago, Chris Christie was blithely opining that solitary confinement was just fine with him as a means of punishment–or emergency shelter. (The consensus among psychiatrists is that solitary confinement, even for brief periods, is the most catastrophic of all remedies in the criminal-justice system; it not only degrades the mental stability of “normal” prisoners, but drives those in psychosis deeper into irrecoverable madness.
I urge you to sign every petition, join every march, telephone every congressperson, take part in any coalition that has a voice in preserving Affordable Care. The alternative is a new Bedlam.
Read the full article here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/mental-health-care-in-a-trump-administration-devastates_us_58b5944ee4b0658fc20f9a25
