Quote:
Originally Posted by Ocean Swimmer
That's true Keegan. I've seen photos of people chained to a chair with slave like leg irons. There is no help from society in these countries.
The families can't pay for damage their mi relatives may cause. So they put them in irons. Super sad.
I have a picture of a person in a mental institute in Alabama in a a at Geographic magazine. They had a chair. A single bed. And a wire mesh window.
Then there was a photo of a man in jail. He had a fan. An electric hot pot for tea and coffee. Shelf of books. Posters. And a pastor was visiting him to teach him meditation.
I told my husband. I'd rather be a criminal than bipolar. ( oh the photo of the mi person. They hadn't committed a crime.
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Ok, we get political and may I say maybe a bit nationalistic or culturally chauvinistic here. Just taking a particular picture as reference can be very deceptive.
I have seen pictures of people being tortured in Guantánamo Bay. Have also seen homes for the elderly where people were constantly heavily sedated.
You can take numerous pictures of people in straightjackets, some up against the wall.
Pictures can easily tell lies. I am sure there must be families in the USA that for lack of a straightjacket have restrained people in less accepted but maybe preferable ways, even such as using leg irons or chains (haven't seen the picture but I can image how such a thing may be more civil).
Edit:
Maybe borrow some British self-referential cynicism, or something similar from most Old Countries or some other more established nations, to put things in more balanced perspective. Mental illness being seen as more normal, being more accepted, certainly has advantages, but also major drawbacks: people don't think they need to care because the state or some other institution will provide. Same with the elderly. Enough of them on antipsychotics to handle them or living in filth in their homes. Same effect individualism has on many with psychiatric disorders, stuck at home or in the streets and people looking the other way.