Mental health crisis
As a charter member of our crisis clinic board of directors in 1970, I find our current, sadly predictable and easily preventable mental health “crisis” to be... comical?
As a first wave environmental planning student at Huxley, I discovered the 1964 Comprehensive Community Mental Health Plan that included a crisis clinic and transitional half-way housing. But then Congress had to fund a war on Asia instead. By 1974, as I was nearing graduation, I suggested at a board meeting that legalizing pot would generate enough money to fund the plan. But then Congress had to fund a war on drugs instead.
Looking back, I wonder how did all those efforts to create humane planning based on public science and pure research go nowhere? When did opposing a plan, become an alternative plan? When did planning not to plan (for the public good) become the only plan? When did a bunch of Nobel prize-winning scientists become stupid and pure research become useless? Long before a billionaire running for president called our leaders “morons”! Long before Sen. McCain said, “ if it wasn’t for staffers and relatives, Congress would have a zero percent approval rating”! Apparently I’m not the only one to find this free market “government” by criminals, for criminals, that is criminal... to be comical!
John Ruth, Bellingham
This story was originally published February 28, 2016 at 4:01 PM with the headline "Mental health crisis."