Location
Guzman 113, Dominican University of California
Start Date
4-20-2017 5:00 PM
End Date
4-20-2017 5:15 PM
Faculty Mentor(s)
Gay Lynch, Ph.D.
Presentation Format
Oral Presentation
Abstract/Description
Our country’s healthcare system is at a moral and ethical crossroads. The way we treat those whom we call “the homeless” is deplorable. Many of the homeless are mentally ill and need treatment. Those with the severe brain diseases of schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, and bi-polar disorder should be treated just as those with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are treated. Those with severe mental illness, who have no insight into their illness, should not be allowed to dictate their own treatment. If a homeless person is brought to San Francisco General Hospital and is found to be a schizophrenic in psychiatric distress, and concurrently found to have active tuberculosis, this patient can be forced to be treated for tuberculosis, but is not forced to be treated for schizophrenia. Both of these diseases have serious consequences, not only for the patient, but for the public. Effectively treating mental illness must become a national imperative. No American citizen should be forced to sleep in their own filth or be “warehoused” in jail for being sick. We must treat them with compassion, providing the mentally ill and their families with the tools necessary to be healthy members of society.
This is the story of the mental health system in California and its effects on my mother and her four children. Homeless mentally ill Americans are dying on our streets, and on December 15, 1999, one of them was my mother.
Schizophrenia and Its Effects on an American Family: A Call to Action for the 21st Century
Guzman 113, Dominican University of California
Our country’s healthcare system is at a moral and ethical crossroads. The way we treat those whom we call “the homeless” is deplorable. Many of the homeless are mentally ill and need treatment. Those with the severe brain diseases of schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder, and bi-polar disorder should be treated just as those with Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are treated. Those with severe mental illness, who have no insight into their illness, should not be allowed to dictate their own treatment. If a homeless person is brought to San Francisco General Hospital and is found to be a schizophrenic in psychiatric distress, and concurrently found to have active tuberculosis, this patient can be forced to be treated for tuberculosis, but is not forced to be treated for schizophrenia. Both of these diseases have serious consequences, not only for the patient, but for the public. Effectively treating mental illness must become a national imperative. No American citizen should be forced to sleep in their own filth or be “warehoused” in jail for being sick. We must treat them with compassion, providing the mentally ill and their families with the tools necessary to be healthy members of society.
This is the story of the mental health system in California and its effects on my mother and her four children. Homeless mentally ill Americans are dying on our streets, and on December 15, 1999, one of them was my mother.