EAllusion wrote:Mental institutions are historically bad enough that yes, you would be much better off wandering the streets than taking your chances in one. You value real world experience, so take it as someone who has actual experience with people who were institutionalized historically and people who have been placed in institutions recently. It's somewhere in-between being sent to a jail, a CIA black site, and a community center.
But happily are choices aren't between do nothing and involuntary commitment in an institution. There are a vast array of community-based mental health resources that are used to help people where there is chronic under-funding relative to the scope of the problem. Community-based treatment has the triple benefit of being more humane, cheaper, and more effective. I can't speak to your local situation, but I'm willing to bet it wouldn't be hard to find papers and articles who could if you were looking.
The three big causes of persistent homelessness are domestic violence, drug/alcohol addiction, and pervasive, long-term mental illness that causes disability. Each needs its own set of different, but overlapping responses in terms of how you fold people into the "system" and get resources to them so they can have stable housing. That's why what goes on in a domestic violence center is different than, say, a program to get someone on MA to pay for anti-psychotics and med admin follow-up they sorely need. I work with the disabled due to mental illness population and can describe in a lot of detail how it works locally and what we could use to do our job better, but I'm sure it's a little different where you are as it would be anywhere.
So how do these folks that are wandering the streets...who haven't changed their clothes in months or years...who just wander through the streets talking to themselves seek and receive help? Do you think they will make appointments and make sure they are followed up on.
EA...these are people that can't even wash their hands or faces. They stink beyond all belief, and you can't communicate with them. I have seen them pee and crap on the sidewalk during the day, why people in suits and ties walk by. And some how they are going to seek help, take their meds, and do follow ups?
You really need to take a visit down here, you would change your mind.