Drugs and Mental Health
Prescription Drug Addiction: A Medical Condition, Not a Moral Failure - Huffington Post
Pot bill a waste of time - Attleboro Sun Chronicle
Beacon Hill's drug warriors - MetroWest Daily News
Another Useless Crime Bill - Attleboro Patch
Where legal and medical issues tangle - Attleboro Sun Chronicle
Mental illness and psychopaths - MetroWest Daily News
Can we help them before they hurt us? - Philadelphia Inquirer
When crime is rooted in mental illness - Attleboro Sun Chronicle
Mental illness and violence - MetroWest Daily News
Shootings underscore need to address mental illness - Fall River Herald
Substance abuse contributes to violence in the mentally ill - Taunton Daily Gazette
I wanted to comment upon your writings about crime and mental illness. I have had personal and professional experience with the dilemma between balancing individual rights with the need to protect members of a family or the general public from violent actions perpetrated by mentally/emotionally impaired citizens. It is a macabre see-saw which I believe we can no longer tolerate. In my family, I've survived sad experience with the inability of the judicial system to keep a person in a mental health facility even when involved medical opinion deemed such a stay to be critical. I heartily agree with the holistic approach as well as the need for both public will and public support as you declared in your final two paragraphs! Abusing discharge instructions by poorly or not at all adhering to medicine dosing or scheduled progress checking appointments is unacceptable for the common good. I, of course, include each ill subject in the "common good." How many at risk folk are we targeting? How can each be counted and accounted for over time? New layers of monitoring or social workers must be linked with rigorous accountability, so difficult to handle in such a huge country with distinct regional differences and all with serpentine bureaucracies. I hope you and your fellow grad students in public policy may find this issue compelling enough to draw up a proposal for change!