How we ignore the the victims of disasters of our own making while opening our hearts and wallets to the people of Haiti

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When a tragic event like the earthquake in Haiti occurs, the hotlines are a buzz and now we can even text our donations to help the hundreds of thousands left homeless and in need. Everything is made easy for us. Our news programs flash the telephone and text numbers while bombarding us with devastating images. I just received my umpteenth e-mail alert.

While I applaud these efforts; the heartfelt generosity I see outpouring from my countrymen and women to strangers across the globe makes me wonder; how can many of these same people literally step over the homeless on our own streets? We divert our glances and quicken our pace. Sure, some of us give money to charities, but the homeless remain.

An earthquake occurred within our own borders a long time ago and we have been feeling the aftershocks for decades. The US homeless population rivals the numbers of people afflicted by the Earthquake in Haiti and up to a third have a severe form of mental illness. We have become so accustomed to it that we don't even see the victims on the street anymore.

What happened? Well part of what happened was that beginning in the 1960's, an explosion of former state hospital patients were released into our communities. The premise was that community mental health services were not only more humane, but less costly.

The whole process was coordinated poorly; housing could not be secured to keep pace with the number of patients being released and remains a problem today. This started the homeless problem and since housing continues to be a problem, so does homelessness. On top of that, the sickest of the sick were also released; those who, through no fault of their own, would never recover enough to participate in their own care. My brother Paul was one of them.

The flow of patients released into the community continued, unabated, over decades, and the homeless population continued to grow. So did our prison population. The sickest of the sick, not only do not understand they are sick, they do not have the life skills required to maintain their physical, let alone mental health.

Yes, I can hear you. Many people with a severe mental illness can live productive lives in the community. I am not talking about them. Yes, the community system can work for many people with severe forms of mental illness, but not all.

The sickest of the sick cannot manage the maze of rules and regulations they run into on the "outside". They don't even know how to cook their own food and buy their own groceries, yet they are expected to do just that. Adult homes are the last resort for people like my brother and now they will be closed due to the latest Supreme Court ruling that they are unconstitutional.

Virtually no long-term care facilities are available to people who are so sick due to a mental illness that they are made incapable of living on their own to the point where they could die unless of course, they also have a debilitating illness in some other organ of their body, or the person is over 64 or under 21. I know, it's confusing isn't it? But that's the way it is. This is discrimination pure and simple.

I think about the hundreds of thousands of homeless people in our own country; a large portion of them are just plain sick and need our help. Many wind up in prison because of incidents that occurred while they were having a psychotic episode. They are all someone's son or daughter, sister or brother, yet we still just step over them or look the other way. It's very sad.

For more on why there are no long-term care facilities available for people with severe mental illness and what you can do to change it, please read my post, End Discrimination Against the Severely Mentally Ill.

Authors Website: http://mcclucker.blogspot.com

Authors Bio:
Ilene is the 9th of 10 children, a twin-less twin, the mother of twin boys (aren't they supposed to skip a generation?) and a wife of 27 years.

Growing up in a large, Irish-Catholic family was an experience, to say the least, made that much more interesting given that she and her siblings were in their teen's and twenties during the 60's and 70's.

Ilene is a self-taught writer. Her common phrase is, "I am a technical writer by trade and a creative writer by desire". Ilene writes on a wide variety of subject matters that include family, politics, women's issues, health care, mental health care and anything that "gets her Irish up".

Ilene describes herself as a "born-again" Atheist. She doesn't have anything against people who believe in God or who follow the teachings of Jesus, Mohammad, Baha'u'llah, Confucius, Buddha, or whatever religious prophet and teachings that people follow. All she asks is that people accept that she can have good morals and values (yes that is very subjective) and not believe in God. Her mother used to say that the world would be a better place if people just followed the last 7 commandments.

Ilene was tremendously affected by the long-illness and early death of her twin brother, Paul. Paul was diagnosed with schizophrenia when they were only 16. He spent one year in a private hospital until the maximum lifetime limit was met on their health insurance policy. He was committed to a state mental institution at the tender age of 17 and spent the next 22 years between three different state hospitals. When the final push to release the patients into the community was made in the 1990's, Paul was moved to an "assisted" living apartment complex. When that proved too much for him, he was moved to an adult home. Paul's life during that time was like a nightmarish roller coaster ride from adult home to the local psych wards to the state hospital and back again, only to have the ride start all over again. He finally got off the ride when his emphysema was so bad that he was accepted into a nursing home in 2007. He was diagnosed with lung cancer a few months later and died on May 1, 2008.

While Ilene is not busy writing advocacy articles about mental health related issues, she is writing a book about her brother. She submits articles to any and all publications like this in the hopes that she gets discovered and someone pays her to write what's on her mind.