M1ch431

This is for the state of New York, which is a large area that encompasses more than just New York City. In 2022, there were over 1 million vacant houses just in the state of New York. Affordable housing and the lack thereof is a crisis. It must be rectified for a healthy society to thrive.

As for New York City, apartment buildings could be constructed or individuals could be relocated.

As of January 2024, there were approximately 158,019 homeless individuals in New York State, with the majority located in New York City. This number reflects a significant increase in homelessness, driven by factors such as a lack of affordable housing and an influx of asylum seekers.

As of January 2025, it is estimated that over 350,000 people are homeless in New York City

If there are over a MILLION vacant houses, and 350k (or slighty more) homeless people, what the fuck are we doing?

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

I’m sorry but you can’t just let all mentally ill people go free to do whatever they want

This is a free society. There is no due process or evidence before they are kidnapped in this instance.

I’m sorry but you can’t just let all mentally ill people go free to do whatever they want, and you definitely can’t just throw money and houses at them and expect the problem to go away.

No money is thrown at them before they get to be in the situation they are in. They are homeless because they lack funds. They cannot afford insurance or reliably access medical care. If there are public services available to them, they may not know they have access to them, or they may be under-served by them.

You might not like it, but there are people with mental illnesses who either need someone to be a full time carer for them

I have suggested multiple times that they be given all social supports that are available to them. If they require that, they should be given that option.

The other option is you just let them die on the streets, maybe killing some other people along the way.

Your characterization of people suffering from mental illness or homeless people in general being violent is not reflected by the facts. People with schizophrenia are more likely to be the VICTIMS of a crime, than be the perpetrator.

If you read my initial comment in the thread, you would have seen me saying this:

If somebody is unable to provide for their needs, give them the ability to do so. Provide food, real housing, actual medical care, and an option for outpatient mental health care for them to recover if they are not in crisis.

Even in the comment you are responding to I said this:

In the latter situation, the best you can do is try to earn their trust and ensure they are provided an environment where they feel safe - providing them with every social support and alternative that they should be entitled to explore for their betterment.

I meant housing.

Nowhere in the article does it suggest that one needs to be psychotic or schizophrenic, only that they appear mentally ill to first responders. They are not able to diagnose this.

Even if you refuse to read the article, the subtext here on Lemmy reads:

The foundation of the new policy is that New York state will be able to authorize first responders to forcibly hospitalize mentally ill New Yorkers who cannot meet their own basic needs such as food, shelter or medical care.

There are economic and societal reasons for individuals to not be able to meet those needs.

Impoverishment and homelessness are issues that society, and capitalism at large, refuse to address with real solutions. Those solutions are too expensive to those that make policy.

A housing crisis, a depression of wages and rise in cost of living, inaccessibility of timely and cost-efficient health care interventions (mental or otherwise), inaccessibility of drug rehabilitation and a system that punishes drug use criminally, and having no social safety net (to prevent such occurrences of homelessness and lack) is the recipe that creates the situations that these individuals experience.

The headline is not accurate, read the article.

If they are actively violent and have committed a crime, hold them until their (expedited) court date (while providing them the option to explore support/therapy and/or access to spiritual counselors), record examinations by psychiatrists/perform them with outside/impartial observation, give the accused legal representation, and let publicly observable courts decide their fate. The option of a jury, witness/family/etc. testimony, and second opinions is imperative to their human rights.

If they have committed no crime (homelessness or being unable to provide for your needs are not crimes), are not violent, and are not a direct threat to themselves or others (and there is no concrete evidence that they will be) - there's nothing you should be able to do to violate their will.

In the latter situation, the best you can do is try to earn their trust and ensure they are provided an environment where they feel safe - providing them with every social support and alternative that they should be entitled to explore for their betterment.

It still exists. We may not lobotomize patients or put them in insulin comas, but forced ECT is still on the table. Even if the practice has improved with technological advancements, it can still be misapplied.

Though it was almost a decade ago (and in Austrailia) this story stuck out to me as being an example of everything that can go wrong in psychiatry: https://www.madinamerica.com/2016/05/psychiatry_garth_daniels/

It's fucking tragic.

Contesting forced treatment orders, such as forced ECT, is an up-hill battle. Even if the practice is more humane nowadays, it still results in damage if improperly prescribed in those deemed treatment-resistant.

I am speaking up for the people who are not served by the system and are effectively silenced. Psychiatrists are generally not legally responsible for iatrogenic illness/harm - proving damage is near to impossible, even in cases of clear malpractice and neglect.

I implore readers to look at https://www.madinamerica.com/ and consider reading Robert Whitaker's books. He is not a psychiatrist, but there are plenty of psychiatrists and other mental health professionals who write or indirectly contribute to that website. I consider him qualified, but please don't treat his voice as an authority and please use discernment when reading his works or reading anecdotes from that website. It takes a strong heart and stomach to be able to read some of the stories. If accurate and true, there are many crimes against humanity documented on that website.

There are many success stories to psychiatry. I don't want to discount the stability and healing some individuals receive from proper intervention. Please don't let what I write stop you from seeking out care if you are in need. There ARE good facilities that practice a leading standard of care - that do their best to not violate your will and treat you as a human.

Find a way of treating them and helping them to adjust to society without the use of coercion or a violation of their rights. That means giving them real legal representation, giving them access to courts that are open to public observation (mental health courts are NOT sufficient), giving them access to second opinions, and exhausting social supports (e.g. housing them in a safe environment) without imprisoning them.

The bar for being declared incompetent and unable to consent to treatment (which leads to forced psychiatry) is not high enough. Even coming from a psychiatrist, it is effectively hearsay in my opinion. There is not enough due process and outside oversight.

There are real side effects to psychiatry - it's called iatrogenic illness. When somebody is in crisis, what do they prescribe? They prescribe powerful drugs, usually neuroleptics. For example, tardive dyskinesia can affect up to 20% of people who take neuroleptics. It could be permanent - look up YT videos of those afflicted. It's easy to stereotype somebody as mentally ill if they develop TD.

It could be that somebody reacts nicely to the drugs they are prescribed. But what happens when they are released and can't afford treatment or become non-compliant with treatment? It can lead to disastrous withdrawal and terrible side effects, that can result in more hospitalization or a worsening of their illness.

Knowing that, why would you take away somebody's ability to not consent to treatment? Why can't we give them access to intensive therapy, that they consent to, that properly addresses the root causes of their illness and inability to care for themselves? Why do we treat traumatized individuals by inflicting MORE trauma on them? Being kidnapped, imprisoned, and medically raped is traumatizing. Why are individuals not given the option to not consent to medication, but only consent to therapy?

I invite you to look at Soteria Houses, which is a different model of care, that successfully achieves remission in those that are experiencing first-episode psychosis/schizophrenia. If they can achieve remission with little to no psychiatric medication (and likely no life-long prescriptions) in a severe illness, without coercion or locked doors, why don't we give more people the chance to experience that? What if they have the capacity to heal in a supportive environment that doesn't strip them of their rights - an environment that respects their will and autonomy?

Involuntary psychiatry is a violent practice that strips its victims of all human rights and effectively all due process. It is an unimaginable horror that can possibly lead to coercive psychiatry or medicalized rape.

“who appear to be mentally ill and who display an inability to meet basic living needs” could be taken against their will to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.

Not being able to provide for your needs is not mental illness. An appearance of mental illness is not proof that somebody needs involuntary commitment. First responders are not equipped to diagnose mental illness - this is a stripping of rights and imprisonment.

If somebody is unable to provide for their needs, give them the ability to do so. Provide food, real housing, actual medical care, and an option for outpatient mental health care for them to recover if they are not in crisis.

I understand some people are severely mentally ill, are in crisis, and are a DANGER to themselves and others and need care ASAP, but this is just targeting impoverished individuals, who may be homeless, based on what is effectively hearsay.

We can do better than this as a society.

It's more likely that the capitalist would just try to rip the inventor off and take full credit for the innovation and out-compete the inventor (unless it was incredibly unique and patented very carefully/licensed to a megacorp).

You basically need to be an expert in patent law to be able to bring a product to market. Even then, it still doesn't prevent copycats from also coming to market and completely obliterating you. You need to engage in lawfare to stop them - a patent is only as good as your ability to enforce it.

Of course, not every innovative product needs to be brought to market for others to enjoy in its unadulterated form and you certainly don't need to profit from or receive credit for your innovations to innovate (which is the point of the meme). Open-source or 3D-printed technology is a net positive for humanity if people have interest to make it themselves or learn from it.

This is a federated platform. Nobody here is a regular user akin to a tech-illiterate user at a company. Typical users here likely have the ability to read, which is all I needed to install all common (gaming/user-focused) distributions on my hardware.

I gave plenty of reasons why it works better for me. I have no special Linux knowledge and I use an entirely vanilla setup.

but telling others what they must give up to conform to what Linux can do is pushing cult mentality.

If all you're losing is your specialty audiophile hardware, which you paid good money to consume, you're not a regular user. Regular end-user hardware works fine, whether your GPU is NVIDIA or AMD.

You are only providing proof why people should always avoid Linux at all cost.

Unpatched admin account access, sub-par security features/process isolation, and running on the most common operating system targeted by malware is harmful to regular users. Windows Defender sending everything you download to their cloud is an invasion of privacy. No regular user of LTSC would know how to disable Windows Defender or even know how to use the group policy editor to disable exposed sources of telemetry. Since finding a source of LTSC is more difficult for regular users, they'd likely experience less hiccups just downloading a common Linux distribution and putting it on a flash drive. The principles of installing most user-focused Linux distributions are the same as the Windows Installer when proceeding with a graphical setup to write the operating system to your drive.

The reason that recently sparked me to switch to Linux was my bluetooth headphones not receiving audio when my screens turned off on Windows. My microphone frequently not working unless I uninstalled the drivers and rebooted. Take that in for a second. Neither device is uncommon for regular users. No, my computer wasn't going to sleep/hibernating.