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Old January 3, 2013, 08:24 AM   #55
jimbob86
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Join Date: October 4, 2007
Location: All the way to NEBRASKA
Posts: 8,722
More differences between the 50's and now:

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Well for one thing, in 1950 the U.S. population was about 150,700,000. Today the population is somewhere around 315,100,000 (US Census Bureau estimate as of this writing). Even if the per capita incident rate was the same as today, there would have been half as many incidents per year.
1- Besides there being twice as many of us now, we are much more crowded- in the 50's we were still a much more rural nation- My uncle never gets tired of telling me that the school bus that rolled into Sherman township in sw Furnas Co. picked up 50+ kids every morning ..... and there are now no inhabited houses in that township. The school that bus went to is closed and there are only 3 schools left in that county. Where did all these people (and theri descendants) go? To the city and suburbs.

1950's America was much more small town deal- Everybody knew your name, and your parents, and if you were "not right" everybody knew it.... and if you really were deemed dangerous by your community ..... you were "institutionalized".

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if the current mental health system were different intervention, including locked psych units etc. would have stopped it. These are indisputable facts, I can dig up the references if needed but they are all pretty easy to find.
2-Now I am not a MH proffessional, either, but I am a bit of a history buff...... I noted that the rise of all these atrocities dovetails fairly closely with the decline of forcible commitments and the shuttering of many of these "institutions" in favor of outpatient drug therapies, in the 1980's..... think about it: When was the first time you heard the term "Off his meds" ?

Now before all the Head Docs here go ballistic, I am not for bringing back Nurse Ratched and Electro-Shock therapy..... but if you have mentally ill people walking the streets that are one missed med dose from losing it ..... and they are responsible for taking their meds ...... this stuff WILL happen, and in the disjointed society that we have today, it will be a complete surprise to most everybody in the affected community, because people today barely know their neighbors, let alone everyone in town.
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