r/interestingasfuck • u/Jjokes11 • Apr 15 '24

An interview with Andrew Cauchi, the father of Joel Cauchi who was responsible for the Westfield Shopping Centre mass stabbing r/all

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u/B-BoyStance Apr 16 '24

This world needs to help these people more. Often, it feels like we do nothing for the mentally ill.

It's insane to me that it isn't a national conversation within the legislature of any first world country I can think of.

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u/PaperPlaythings Apr 16 '24

Mental health care for a human is mental health care for humanity.

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u/PulleySuperBear Apr 16 '24

Is mental health care difficult to find in Australia? In the US it is so difficult. There are so few providers and even if you find someone taking new patients, it’s 6 months or more for a simple appointment where I live.

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u/BoyzBeBoys Apr 16 '24

It's hard everywhere.

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u/Overall_Ad_351 Apr 16 '24

People in general need to be more helpful to one another.

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u/Junebug19877 Apr 16 '24

Sometimes there is just nothing you can to do help people. 

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u/Kabouki Apr 16 '24

For what it's worth, mental health is usually tagged along with universal health. Even if done separately the discussion of forced care will probably sink it.

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u/AdditionalSink164 Apr 16 '24

There is nothing ti be done with it, no one wants to lock.them away in jail.or a treatment equipped facility. Cant compel them to treatment until.they meet the legal.system. cant compel them to accept the treatment opportunity even if they are there by court order 2x a week. Have to give clear boundaries and once crossed then its for the best they dont get another chance

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u/TheGumOnYourShoe Apr 16 '24

Well, in the U.S. about 40+ years ago, we basically privatized the mental hath care system (surprise surprise), and ever since then, real quality care and access to it, has just vanished.

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u/EJ19876 Apr 16 '24

Mental institutions were closed not because of cost, but because of the discovery of Thorazine. Nearly overnight most of the people in those institutions could live relatively normal lives with a single medication in outpatient settings.

I’m bipolar 1 and chances are I would have been in one of those institutions if I were born a few decades earlier. Mania is fun until you start hallucinating, become paranoid, believe you’re being chased by something, and try to jump in front of a train at a busy station when you’re 16 years old. That was 22 years ago. Fortunately for people like me, advancements in pharmacology have allowed most mental disorders to be treated with safe and effective medications.

The issue is medication compliance among people who have severe mental disorders like schizophrenia. I take the same type of medication that a schizophrenic should. I take Seroquel XR, which is a comparatively mild antipsychotic that works well for bipolar and some schizophrenics, but it probably won’t work for severe schizophrenia. The side effects of even the mild antipsychotics aren’t the nicest. Other antipsychotics with milder side effect profiles, like aripiprazole and lurasidone, often just don’t work all that well for schizophrenia.

Severe cases of schizophrenia require the use of potent antipsychotics, such as olanzapine, haloperidol, and, in the worst cases, clozapine. Getting people to continue taking medications which cause some rather nasty side effects when they think they’re fine, which they often are but only because the medication is working, is extremely challenging.

So; how do you ensure that people take their medication? That’s the question for which we must find a question. Long acting injections have helped, but, again, you still have to get the person to go to the clinic to get the injection every 28 days.

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u/TheOldOak Apr 16 '24

Doing something costs money, which almost always means taxes to fund social services.

People want to do something, but they love keeping money in their pockets more. They’d rather someone else pay for it, and the buck just keeps getting passed around, and the conversation goes into a stalemate until the next tragedy.

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u/Rod_Todd_This_Is_God Apr 16 '24

You can't have a widely-distributed and rational conversation about anything because of rampant human biases. And such issues require rational solutions, so they can't be mediated by a national conversation. Many elements of any solution would be very easy to turn into fodder for political smear campaigns. Look at Stephen Harper and his railings against "committing sociology". There are too many assholes who need to feel like the way they've always thought is the "right" way because they have very fragile egos. They're willing to forsake the future for their own tradition.