Another day a young man came to my waiting room. He was crying. He said he was a veteran and no one would help him. I pulled him in to my office and met one of my LPC's in the hallway. He'd heard the man. He said I'm a veteran too. I'll help you! That counselor did this consistently. Free of charge. I gave him free rent and utilities!

The "concept of quick and effective mental health care" is harder to achieve than simply providing millions of dollars to pay for treatment and hand out pills. Mental health problems are notoriously difficult to resolve. People who are mentally ill often do not want to be treated -- they are mentally ill.

When we decided that someone who is not a threat to others cannot be incarcerated -- a good idea in my opinion -- we generated a class of people who are not sufficiently sane to care for themselves but also not a threat to others. These people wander our streets.

Perhaps some day science will actually be able to 'cure' them but until then I have no idea what the solution is.

I don't approve of government-guaranteed "health
care for all", either physical or mental. But for the actual criminally insane, perhaps there should be some. As it is a crime issue.

Complete bullshit. We are manufacturing Mental health cases in this country for the following reasons.
1. Provides you with an excuse not to work.
2. Drug and alcohol abuse.
3. Endless wars and foreign interventions which cause real mental health problems plus....... They also result in problem #1 from those that are inclined to look for an excuse. [Sorry to say, not all veterans are solid gold wounded warriors, some are deadbeats just like in normal society]
4. Mollycoddling of children from birth to past adulthood.
5. Sprinkled in here are the genuine mental health cases which are no longer institutionalized.
6. Breakdown of the family unit which leaves the weak minded adrift and without family support. These individuals with family support used to get by but with no family they get adrift and sink in to homelessness and drugs ans alcohol.
If SanFran comes up with free mental health programs it will just be another government boondoggle. This BS story of the poor unsuspecting hard working middle class family that is blindsided and bankrupted by genuine mental health problems, is actually very rare. The majority of problems of this nature are self-inflicted by individuals and also do-gooder government action.

It used to be that there were dedicated mental asylums and religious hospitals who would take these people and try to treat them. Those have largely been shut down by Democrats over the years through policy decisions that want to put the State in charge of everything. And so as a result we have cities like San Francisco which are literally spending tens of millions of dollars every year to clean up human feces and used drug needles.

One day a youngster walked up to the door (a half door) of my office and asked, 'Ma'am where can I go for drug counseling?' I asked, 'When did you last use drugs?' His answer, 'This morning.' I advised him to turn around and walk to the second door on his left and knock and he would receive help. The chief of police was sitting on a sofa in my office (couldn't be seen by the young man). His eyes opened and so did his mouth and I said, 'Sit still and shut up!' He did. Help is what most of these people need most. I provided that for 18 years. Free of charge! I wrote a lot of grants!

We had our own tragedy at Santa Fe High School which is just at our county line. The lad who did the dirty deed lived in my town. He was attending our schools. I am very angry he didn't get the mental health care he so badly needed. His parents sent him over to Santa Fe when he got kicked out of our schools. Not the right thing to do! Mental Health is a high priority in our youngsters and we need to address it fiercely.

Notice how these liberals have these wonderful ideas that only call for tax increases?

Isn't this exciting? Now, a better way to do this is to recruit volunteer mental health specialists one day a month and offer free services to those who could afford it while being funded by private foundations who would LOVE to contribute to this cause. They could also offer services to Medicaids, bill Medicaid and use the revenue to support the clinics. I'll bet 99.9% of the mental health providers are credentialed by Medicaid and they could donate their mental health care patients Medicaid payments to the clinics. This works.