I Was Attacked Yesterday

[tamaris]

That's what the police said. A man i sat next to on a bench started talking to me he seemed very agressive. I said I was just enjoying my coffee and the lovely weather. He became very agitated and began shouting. Next thing he threw his coffee cup at me hitting me on the neck. I got up to move away and he was ranting and raving at me. It was witnessed by others. I rang police as i was advised to do. I didn't press charges. Left me shaken up.

[naomi24]

You did the right thing in moving away and making the police aware. I'm not surprised you were shaken up.

[dunnitall]

Awful and dreadful to go through...hope you cope after the traumatic time you had, my sympathy. Trouble is because mental health issues are now left to society and the agencies..police and ambulance to deal with we will not see this go away. I've draconian measures that would stop it in a heart beat....but that doesn't comply with the softly softly snowflake ...they're human rights approach so until something I done along those lines....nowt will change sadly!!

[kvalidir]

//I've draconian measures that would stop it in a heart beat....but that doesn't comply with the softly softly snowflake ...they're human rights approach so until something I done along those lines....nowt will change sadly!!//

Could you elaborate on that please Dunnitall?

[Sqad]

" I remember the days when mentally-ill people were cared for, if necessary, behind locked doors. "

and so do I BUT, there was in the 50's and 60,s a public outcry that it was inhumane for these "mentally ill" subjects should be locked away in these Frankenstein like castles and the key thrown away.
So, bowing to increasing public pressure, these mentally ill patients were released into the community which was ill prepared for them.
NOW......you are moaning about mental patients in the community.
What do you want?

[bainbrig]

Sqad. You pose an unfair question.

What ‘we’ (by which you hopefully mean fair-minded decent people) want is that those who need care should receive care - and kindness.

Not be cast out into an UNcaring community, nor banged-up in monstrous prisons.

Kindness, compassion - and, where necessary, separation from those they could harm.


bB

[Sqad]

bainbrig.......I take your point, it may be an unfair question but is a pragmatic one.
Sympathy and compassion doesn't come easily and never has done, society is what it is, with sympathy and compassion only a part, indeed a small part of the equation.
Mental health is not popular,either by politicians,nurses and certainly not doctors.
NOW i ask again...which would you prefer, mental problems in institutions OR in the community?

[kvalidir]

Sqadi :) Clearly both options need to be available. People who are a serious potential to cause harm to other people or themselves should be cared for in a secure environment, whilst those who are not in that catagory ought to have care in the community, but there should be care not just chuck em out and leave them to fend for themselves. x

[Sqad]

Kvali...QUITE my darling.

Dangerous psychpaths ARE locked away, but these are in the minority of psychiatric disorders. The majority 98% ( I have just guessed) are in the community which is ill equipped to cope.......very few people having the interest or the desire to indulge.....UNLESS it is in the Private Sector and that may well and does attract a greater concern.

[bainbrig]

Well, it was in the 80s that the ‘care in the community’ misnomer was first bandied about, and in cities on Sunday mornings we started to see aimless, confused individuals wandering about.

I must say that I associated this phenomenom with Thatcher’s barrow-boy economics, where the rich got richer and the poor (in every sense) went to the devil.

Plus ca change.

BB