The Mental Health Field

The mental health field is the most disgusting field on earth. Not because the people serviced have disabilities, but because the disabled are given rights that no one else has.

Imagine walking into a job, where your clients curse at you, spit at you, throw feces at you, punch and laugh at you when you get injured; and if you so much as raise your voice at the person doing this to you, you will be charged with abuse and terminated from your job. Welcome to the mental health field.

It started with Willowbrook, an institution for mentally retarded people. The conditions there were so bad due to severe lack of funding and staff, that it was shut down. Because this recieved so much news attention due to Geraldo Rivera, many laws were passed as a result. Over time, in an effort to protect retarded people from abuse, retarded people were given a world without consequences for their actions.

In the real world, if you walk up and punch someone in their face, you will not only get attacked back, but you will probably go to jail too. But if you're an employee who gets punched by a mentally retarded person, you CANNOT punch them back. There are specialized maneuvers called "SCIP" techniques, which you must use to restrain them safely, without injury, for a limited time, and only if it's in the retarded client's service plan to use. Sounds fair, huh?

Now this could be tolerable if mental health clients in question were basically invalids who have no idea what they're doing; however, this is far from the case. I worked in the mental health field for six years, and dealt with "high-functioning" clents; basically, people who have mental health issues, but were intelligent enough to do most things themselves. In fact, I worked with clients in the institution who drove cars, had their own jobs, had kids, and even one guy with a 160 I.Q. Now imagine people with this kind of intelligence telling you that they hope your baby dies, spitting in your face, throwing food in the halls nowing you'll have to clean up after, throwing racial slurrs at you...and there's nothing you can do about it.

Where I worked, I could actually call the cops and press charges; but often times, the cops wouldn't do anything, because they had better things to deal with than someone spitting in your face. The house I worked at had the police called so many times, that the residents weren't even phazed by their presence. They would simply just behave when the cops were there, then continue swearing at you as loud as they can to your face. But if you ignore a client screaming at you that you're a worthless whore, nigger or bitch, you WILL be terminated from your job, because ignoring someone is "abuse". (I've been called a nigger, and every female that's ever worked at my job has been called both a bitch and a whore.)

In fact, any sort of punisher, no matter how small, is "abuse". Let's say a mental health client throws food all over the hallway that a staff is gonna have to clean up; so you say, "Because you did this, I'm not giving you your desert tonight, because you were so rude." Anywhere else in the world, this would make perfect sense to do; in the mental health field, this is "abuse", and you will be fired. Employees are supposed to "reward" good behavior, and never punish bad behavior. In other words, something can't be taken away from a client because they were an asshole; they can only be given things if they do right.

The OPWDD (Office for Persons With Developmental Disabilities) is the entity in New York State that comes up with these laws, though I imagine each state is pretty much the same. What these offices fail to realize, is that without consequences, the disabled people living in these institutions will NEVER change. Imagine a world where there were no cops; instead of punishment for breaking the law, they give you cookies for each week you don't commit a felony. How long do you think order would last in the world?

There MUST be laws where some sort of punishment is put in place for bad behavior. This is the only way humans learn.

I can, and should, be punched in the face for cursing and spitting at someone with zero provocation. Right? So should I be exempted from an ass-kicking that most people would get for the same thing, just because I'm in an institution when I do it? There should be places built, where disabled people who do this get a foot repeatedly shoved up their ass until they get it right. If this doesn't work, then they SHOULD NOT BE ALLOWED IN SOCIETY. Period.

And if such a place existed, I'd work there for free.