Email This Page

Yesterday I spent two hours at Milwaukee County Justice Council meeting hearing about a 2 million dollar grant to keep persons with mental illness out of jail. Today I went to a three and half hour meeting of the County Mental Board talking how to budget money for the County Mental Health system. The boards are not connected and the Director of Mental Health for the County was at neither one. Also there was no talk in the five and half hours of the two meetings about medical treatment of persons with mental illnesses. The Medical Board meeting today mentioned that no local hospital was willing to run a hospital for “persons danger to self and others” replacing the Mental Health Complex. However, it was mentioned that there were three outside for profit health organization interested in taking the money for a new limited private facility. I got creative in the session today and wrote the first essay. After I got home I wrote the other ones. Here they are. You might learn about the state of mental health treatment in Milwaukee County in these easy essays than I did in the two meetings.

Money or Baloney

Money or baloney
No matter what
The local hospitals say no
To medical treatment of ill
persons in a mental health crisis
But three outside for profit
Health businesses say yes
We will take your rejected sick
Feed them baloney
And make some money

Cancerous Persons?

We say people with mental illnesses
Are ill just like people with cancer.
Yet we call them ‘mentally ill”.
Are people with cancer ‘cancerous’?
Certainly not, we say
People with cancer are not their illness
And their illness should not identify them.
And we go on calling people mental illnesses ‘mentally ill.”

Board Talk and No Medical Treatment

At the Community Justice Council Board yesterday
The talk was about using a new million dollar grant
To reduce the number of persons with mental illnesses
Going to jail.
Criminal Justice imitative were explored
But no medical treatment for those ill and jailed.

At the County Mental Health Board meeting today,
(No connection with the Community Justice meeting)
The talk was about spending money
To privatize the county mental health system
Privatizing mental health treatment
But no medical treatment for the ill was discussed.

Sending Our Ill to jail

With all the money, and time spent
To study and PR the Mental Health System
And with all the endless talk,
Ill persons are being sent to jail
With mental illness as their ‘crime’.
Milwaukee, when we will Stop
Sending Our Ill to Jail.

Comments

Please send any comments on this post to . Let us know which day’s post your comments pertain to. If the comments are appropriate we will post them here for you.