we 'tried our best to keep him in the facility'

[zzzz]

In reply to:

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[brandons87]

There are a multitude of problems with letting people out of psych hospitals:

1) In order to maintain confinement, the patient has to SPECIFICALLY state that he's going to hurt/kill himself or somebody else. Even if he's acting like a loon, unless he uses those "magic words" then insurance companies and Medicaid/Medicare wont pay for continued confinement.

2) Its EXTREMELY common for family members to resent the patient being discharged, and they commonly make claims like he's not acting right or behaving strangely. Unfortunately, hospitals wont get paid for patients "acting strangely" so thats not a criteria for keeping them.

3) Most of these patient's baseline will NEVER be normal behavior, even when they are adequately medicated. So keeping them locked up because htey are "acting strangely" means keeping them locked up for life.

4) Psych meds generally speaking, suck *** and dont work very well. Its better than taking nothing or a placebo pill, but just barely.

5) Our legal system works very hard to get these people released from hospitals even if they are acting erratically. Courts have consistently ruled over and over again that acting strangely is not just cause to hold somebody against their will in a psych hospital and that the only means you can use to forcibly hold someone is if they say the "magic words" that I described above.

None of this will change until we change the law and insurance regulations. Its time to start committing these people to psych hospitals FOR LIFE with no release until they are acting 100% normal and insurance starts paying for it. Thats a very expensive proposition.