Monday, February 4, 2008

Getting it All Wrong - Mildew on Track


How does Mildew continue to get so many things so wrong?


The police come wout with a welcome and ground-breaking report on mental illness and our lack of coommunity response.


The report is so strong that the otherwise indifferent BC government is forced to follow immiediatley with a promise for a new treatment facility.


Instead of thanking the VPD and prasing them, Mildew complains that it took the police so long to wake up to what the enlightened have known for ages. He counts among the enlightened ----you're sitting down? ---- Philip Owen, Larry Campbell and Don't Siren me When I'm Sleeping Sam Sullivan.


He complains that the VPD never understood Harm Seduction, a strategy increasingly being exposed for the failure it has always been.


And finally, he complans that the VPD wants more cops, not more social workers.


We have news for Mildew. The Vancouver Police Department is in the cop business.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dave, who's Mildew?

Robert W. said...

It's my understanding that there has long been an established correlation between mental illness and drug addicts. It's also clearly obvious that there's a correlation between drug addicts and crime - ie. the former necessitates the latter.

Look at this whole issue with a much wider lens:

1. People with mental illness were removed from places like Riverview because it was supposedly wrong to have them incarcerated in there.
2. Inadequate facilities and support services were available to these people, once they were on the street.
3. Many of them turned to illegal drug use to try to cope with their ailment.
4. They turned to crime to pay for their drugs. And as the months & years marched on, the lives of these people got progressively worse.
5. Owen, Campbell, Sullivan, & others, seeing what was going on, chose to ... not help them get better, not help them get the mental health assistance they needed, but instead made great efforts to make it easier to facilitate their drug abuse.

What a cynical, short-term band-aid solution, easy approach to take. Truly pathetic.

David Berner said...

Robert,

I always appreciate your comments.
This one in particular is so clear and on target.

Be well.

David Berner said...

Who is Mildew?

Mildew is a pro-drug columnist for the Vancouver Sun.

He focuses on crime...which is a crime.

Anonymous said...

I have to concur with Pelalusa when he states "People with mental illness were removed from places like Riverview because it was supposedly wrong to have them incarcerated in there". However, with the "Rights" that our misguided have today, I can guarantee that an individual would have to be 100% willing to be treated in any form. And that is from a Chapter in Dreamland, penned by our Politicians, from the Mayor on up. And that is not going to happen, as the Laws and Rights, ad nauseum apply today.

Anonymous said...

"People with mental illness were removed from places like Riverview because it was supposedly wrong to have them incarcerated in there."
Iirc, deinstitutionalisation was established as a 'throw baby out with the bathwater' response to a series of scandals involving abuse of patients in institutional settings.
Rather than improve patient security, staff screening and supervision etc, governments have chosen instead to toss the mentally ill out into the streets to be abused by the world at large and share the misery.

Anonymous said...

IMO, people were removed from places like Riverview because those types of institutions typically occupied large prime peices of developable real estate... and with large tracts of developable land getting more and more scarce... getting rid of the occupants presented prime development opportunities.

Woodlands, Okalla, Riverview (just to name a couple); are all developed or in the process of being developed.

Just for example, the 10,000 unit condo project planned for the remaining Riverview site represents a $2 billion project alone... thats some big bucks/profits... and big development sites within Greater Vancouver like that are very, very difficult to come by these days.

Anonymous said...

David in Burnaby said, "
"deinstitutionalisation was established as a 'throw baby out with the bathwater' response to a series of scandals involving abuse of patients in institutional settings."

This is true. There *was* abuse of the mentally ill in these institutions. Treatment and caring about people with mental illness has not improved all that much since the 1950s, in my opinion. Many of these people come from good homes and once in the care of so-called mental health professionals and psychiatrists - they seldom improve; mostly they are kept in chemical straight jackets and if Nurse Nasty or Doctor Drug 'Em happen to be in charge of their case, heaven help them. It is such a sad situation. I feel for these people and know that they need a safe, secure place to live.

Sam Sullivan was on NW yesterday spouting inanities about how the province is going to address the situation of the homeless/mentally ill on the downtown east side. How the hell do these guys get elected? Somebody has to care more about people than power, money and experiments......

If "they" can facilitate the 2010 Olympics, surely they can come up with a viable plan for the mentally ill among us - IF THEY CARE ENOUGH AND WANT TO.