brain damage discussion

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actually, this is not new. 30 Years ago, I took a couple months of psychiatry residency (and dropped out when I needed surgery).

They knew back then that a large percentage of people in jail had positive findings of brain damage, often from poor prenatal care, abuse/ head injuries in the past, and low grade lead poisoning, either from eating paint chips or from pollution before they took lead out of gasoline.

and they were just starting to use PET scans to see the damage in real time.

They also knews that LSD and other drugs caused permanent brain changes, and that Temporal lobe epilepsy caused both visions (St Paul, anyone?) and violent outbursts.

When I recovered from surgery I took a job at an institution for the profoundly retarded, at that time when the intellectually disabled were being discharged to the community. (and don't correct me and tell me that I shouldn't use the word "retarded": I am so old that I remember when we used the word "moron" and "imbicile" instead of moderate and severely mentally retarded).

Many of the mildly retarded had already been discharged by the time I took the job, and the nurses remarked that, alas, many of them ended up in jail, either for petty theft or for temper tantrums/violent outbursts. The problem was so bad that the state made special sections for these prisoners, to protect them from the real criminal predators.

The only treatment in the past was to fill these folks up with anti psychotic medications, which sedated them.

But the powers that be decided we needed to stop these "unneeded" medicines, so we were busy weaning them off of medicines and restraints and even protective equipment such as helmets that protected their heads from falls or head banging behavior.

But one doctor who worked in these institutions put out a newsletter suggesting anti seizure medicines for violent outbursts, and voila, it worked on many (but not all) of our violent patients.

Before I started to work there, most of the "mild" cases had been sent to the community, often with little supervision, and alas many of them ended up in jail.

Being naive many of them were horribly abused by other prisoners.

So will Kanye tell Trumpie maybe we should start treating people with these problems in jail, so they can be released?

Or will the civil rights folks, who were behind the "deinsitutionalization" lawsuits, but who never followed up to make sure community services could keep them safe, complain? They  already have pretty well made it impossible to save lives of the depressed via shock treatment, often oppose "forced medicine" for hallucinating schizophrenics, made it almost impossible to hospitalize the mentally ill whose families are in despair over their problems,  or have the police remove those who wander the streets talking to themselves in a delusional state, yet if we try to help the mentally ill, point out clockwork orange that we are harming the prisoners?

The abuse of people in psychiatry in the past was real, but one who never worked with the really dangerous mentally ill can appreciate how bad their behavior can be.

One thing that one needs to remember: there is a difference between use and abuse.

A medicine that allows you to cope and work and interact with your family is a medicine.

A medicine that leads you to addictive behavior, neglect of family in order to get high, or to hurt others is abuse.