Tragic State of Mental Health Treatment

I did a little sleuthing and discovered she lives in an apartment in a very run down part of Harriman, TN. As I looked up the place on Google Maps, it's clear she isn't doing well at all.

What a shame, she had a once promising career.

Thanks for the detective work. So sad to hear this about Jennifer.

At any point, did it occur to anyone close to her that she needs some intervention and probably some mental health treatment?As an ex-alcoholic from a family full of alcoholics I can assure you that the odds are close to 100% that people had tried to help her over and over again.

Nothing works until the person themself makes the change.

It's true that addicts need to do their best to get on board with the changes their lives need. It's also true that some other nations do mental health care and drug treatment a lot better than the United States does.

Our prisons are filled with people who need mental health treatment and drug treatment. Rob a store to support your drug habit, go to prison. But the root isn't that the person is a "robber", the root is that the person is an addict, and addiction is driven by physical and emotional needs that must be treated.

While I agree with you in general, are you suggesting that drug addicts who commit crimes shouldn't be punished for those crimes? Or are you saying that prison time should be prescribed in tandem with rehab and therapy?

The people that own prisons are making far too much $$$ to care whether people need help vs punishment.

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Your mama was a snowblower!

No, just pointing out something that I suspect a lot of people don't consider when thinking about these issues.

I definitely think our criminal justice system is in terrible need of reform, and specifically evidence-based-reforms grounded in real science. I think there's a lot of questions I'd like definitive answers to.

Is the threat of long prison terms really an effective deterrent of criminal activity?

If so, are there some would-be-criminals that it still doesn't deter? And if so, why doesn't it deter them in those instances? And once we have those answers, what can we learn from it?

Which factors, social, economic, etc, seem to do deter criminal activity the most? And what can we learn from that?

Etc. Those are just off the top of my head, I'm not saying those are the definitive questions to ask. I'd just like some real rationality brought to our justice system.

I will say, if you look at the countries with the least criminal activity, their punishment systems are quite different from the U.S. If you're curious about that, Google it, it's interesting stuff.

Oh trust me, I'm aware of many of the differences. But correlation doesn't necessarily imply causation.