ERs Are Overwhelmed With Mental Health Patients
by John Lawrence, September 7, 2019
There is a higher and higher prevalence of mental health issues in today's world. From drug addiction to PTSD to the opioid crisis, it seems that a large percentage of the population doesn't know how to be happy or content or satisfied. Mental health is a function of lifestyle. A healthy lifestyle usually leads to mental as well as physical health. Elementary education should be concerned about teaching young people how to have a healthy lifestyle and good mental and physical health. It should be concerned with what activities and habits lead to good mental health. Instead it is mainly concerned with stuffing intellectual facts into childrens' heads. No wonder they grow up to be absolute ignoramuses when it come to how to live well. They are taught that the good life consists on stuffing more and more facts into their heads so they can "graduate" and get a good job, consume more and make more money. Actually, a person who has mastered how to live i.e. lifestyle doesn't need a lot of money to be happy. You heed a good set of values and a good, healthy lifestyle neither of which the American educational system is concerned with.
Physical education and health used to be part of the curriculum. It isn't any more in many schools. Neither is art and music. Parents have to pay extra for that. The things that lead to a richer and healthier life are considered extracurricular activities that you have to pay for. So young people pick up unhealthy habits like vaping. Vaping was supposed to be a whole lot healthier than cigarette smoking. Remember when New York doctors recommended smoking Chesterfields or Old Golds? Well, those doctors should get back in the business of recommending cigarette smoking again. Compared to vaping it seems to be a whole lot healthier. You don't get lung disease for 30 years or so while with vaping you get it in just a couple of years.
But that's the American way - put a product on the market with no testing whatsoever, and as it turns out, that product can cause serious health problems. If your product promises a high, people will literally gobble it up without any thought for the consequences. Without any thought that there might be something in that product that is a serious health risk - in the case of vaping some kind of oil that congeals in the lungs and renders them useless. So much for the supposed healthier effects of vaping compared to smoking.
Lisa Halverstadt reported in the Voice of San Diego:
Patients grappling with mental health crises are flooding local emergency rooms, chaotic environments that can exacerbate their conditions.
A Voice of San Diego analysis of ER data reported to the state reveals a 60 percent spike in visits for mental health disorders over the last decade.
Lisa Halverstadt found that ERs are often the only option for patients in crisis and that many patients can remain stuck in ERs for hours — or even days — while they wait for long-term care and services already filled with other patients in need.
Those waits and the chaotic ER environment can translate into increased anxiety, agitation and depression for already-traumatized patients.
And then you have the angry young men who are gun nuts. Their anger can be vitiated because they are only a hare trigger away from a discharge. One diss, one loss of a job or a girlfriend and these people go nuts spewing their hatred over scores of people leading supposedly normal, happy lives. They have never been taught how to manage or release their anger. That's a function of lifestyle - learning those techniques and activities that contribute to a life in which anger can be contained, controlled and released in ways that don't hurt other people . Again they were never taught those techniques or activities in school. Maybe they weren't motivated in school. A lot of young men end up committing crimes which land them in jail for life. In many cases they came from poor homes, homes in which the parents weren't capable of teaching them anything or setting a good example. So in order to have a healthy society, the educational system must pick up the ball that the parents have dropped.
An Iowa hospital reports:
James Ellis, MD, a physician at Waterloo, Iowa-based Covenant Medical Center said emergency rooms across the state are flooded with patients seeking care for mental health issues, according to KWWL.
The volume of mental health patients in Covenant's ER is overwhelming, Dr. Ellis said.
"We are absolutely overwhelmed. We're overwhelmed as a staff. We're overwhelmed as a department. We're overwhelmed as a hospital. And the entire region is just completely overwhelmed," Dr. Ellis told KWWL.
Dr. Ellis attributes the problem to a lack of community resources addressing mental health, forcing patients into the ER. However, he also notes some patients can be violent, which poses a problem for ER facilities that are not equipped to handle these patients.
There are so many issues relating to mental health in American society that it is hard to get a handle on them all. Many are related to poverty and homelessness. Many are related to ignorance and lack of understanding as to what constitutes a good life. Many are related to drugs and the promise of a pain free and angst free existence which doesn't exist for anyone. Many are related to American values of money grubbing and consumerism. Many are related to the lack of emphasis on healthy lifestyles at all levels of the educational system. Basically it's a society in which some people sink and some swim, and devil take the hindermost. A proto Fascist society in which the very rich can afford rehab and other forms of treatment. What they have in common with the poor is that they are just as fucked up, but they just have the money to spend to try to ameliorate their situations.
