[Lady Sidhe]

Originally posted by DanaC


If that's your main experience of mentally challenged people then I think I see why you feel the way you do. But thats because you were delaing with mentally ill criminals rather then the mentally ill who are 6 times more likely to be murdered than I am.

Its a little like saying, Work with some french criminals in jail and some french juvenile delinquents before you give me an opinion on the French.

Not true at all. What I'm trying to get across is the fact that mental retardation has levels of severity. A profoundly mentally retarded person is one thing; a person with minor retardation is something completely different. Yet people jump on the word "retarded," and think "profound mental retardation."

People are also led to believe that mentally ill individuals aren't dangerous, which is a bunch of baloney. Fully half of the patients I worked with in a state hospital were there for murder. One woman put her infant in the oven; one smothered her baby. Others were guilty of handgun murders. The adult facility was not a criminal facility. It was a plain old state hospital. When a mentally ill person refuses meds, you can't make them take them. OR, they'll take the meds and get discharged, then stop. These people have murdered once, or more than once. Being mentally ill does not make the murders any less real. It does not mitigate their dangerousness, especially if they're homicidal. It's not always possible to keep a mentally ill person in a hospital indefinately, and others deserve to be protected from them.


Sidhe