Mental Health Care in the 21st Century

Bad news from Mother Jones:

Severe mental illnesses, like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are brain diseases—biological conditions like heart disease or epilepsy. Yet in this country, the institutions most likely to be treating people with these illnesses are not hospitals, but rather jails and prisons.

According to a new report from the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a nonprofit advocacy organization, the United States has fully returned to the 18th-century model of incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional institutions rather than treating them in health care facilities like any other sick people. In 2012, there were roughly 356,268 inmates with severe mental illnesses in prisons and jails, while only 35,000 people with the same diseases were in state psychiatric hospitals.

Dense Is Better

The Dish today has a surprisingly interesting article comparing dense cities to sprawling cities.  It is fascinating how much better the statistics are for dense cities.  Housing is more expensive but combined housing and transportation are cheaper. 

Residents of compact metro areas also have longer, healthier lives, with lower BMIs, lower blood pressure, lower rates of diabetes, and fewer car crash fatalities. An average American in a more compact county has a life expectancy three years longer than one in a less compact county. All these are observations of correlation, not causation. But they tell a remarkably consistent story. Not only can cities limit sprawl through the use of specific policy tools, but the benefits for their citizens of doing so are real and life-changing.

I would guess I live in a sprawling area with some of the disadvantages that go with it.

Simple Things

From the philosopher Friedrich Nietzche,

For happiness how little suffices for happiness! ... the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a whisper, an eye glance-little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.

From Eckhart Tolle,

Here is anther way of finding inner space: Become conscious of being conscious. Say or think “I Am” and add nothing to it. Be aware of the stillness that follows the I Am. Sense your presence, the naked, unveiled, unclothed beingness. It is untouched by young or old, rich or poor, good or bad, or any other attributes.  It is the spacious womb of all creation, all form.