Feminists for re-institutionalization

Programs to help the profoundly disabled are cruisin’ for a bruisin’ under the current admin. Whatever happened to solidarity among those with intellectual disabilities?

This is a feminist issue. Roughly a fifth of Americans care for a disabled family member. Most of those caregivers are, you may not be shocked to learn, women.

This is as good a time as any to talk about one of my hobbyhorses ever since I lived in San Francisco: Re-institutionalization.

We need mental institutions. We needed them when Ronald Reagan tore them down and we need them now. They help literally everyone who is in any way affected by profound disability, which is everyone. But it’s especially girls and women.

For an example of why we need mental institutions, consider Brendan Depa.

Last year, a Florida judge sentenced 18-year-old Brendan to five years in prison for felony aggravated battery.

On the day that aide Joan Naydich kept special needs student Brendan from playing his Nintendo Switch in class the 6’ 6” 220-lb boy ran at Joan, pushed her to the ground, knocked her unconscious, stomped on her lifeless body, and then punched her 15 times. He broke her ribs and left her with a herniated disc, concussion, hearing loss, vision loss, and PTSD.

Before her son’s trial, Leanne Depa wrote a letter documenting her years-long effort to get help.

Brendan had a history of violence.

The medications weren’t working. He was a known threat. He should not have been in school that day. He should have been guarded by large men.

His mother didn’t want him to be in school that day. His group home sent him anyway.

Jordan Neely had also spent time in group homes. Unfortunately, he was on the subway the day Daniel Penny choked him to death because none could compel him to stay. He also had a history of violence, having punched multiple elderly women in the face. He’d been to jail multiple times, where he actually did better than when he was homeless and using drugs.

My last example comes via

Emily Amick

. Not long after a private equity firm closed the only mental health facility in one Wyoming county an unguarded psych patient ran into an elderly patient's room and gouged out her eyes. He fully removed one before anyone stopped him.

In Alcoholics Anonymous, they used to say that if they hadn’t quit drinking they’d be in jail, in an institution, or dead. Nowadays, it’s jail or death.

This is not an improvement.

Our country has individualized responsibility for a task that simply requires a community. In order to pay lip service to “autonomy” we send millions of people whose mental conditions make a mockery of the concept to prisons, jails, and morgues.

Every day across the country millions of adults, mostly women, must spend the bulk of their waking hours caring for, protecting, and protecting everyone else from their profoundly disabled children, parents, and other family members so they don’t end up in jail or literally decomposing on the streets. I watched this happen in San Francisco.

We force children to share a roof with dangerous people.

Support from the state is generally inadequate and unpredictable, contingent upon the whims of legislators who prioritize tax cuts for the rich.

“But institutions are unpleasant!”

Then make them better.

You know what’s unpleasant? Profound disability. I personally know a profoundly disabled man in his late 20s. They tell me that mentally, he’s two years old. He can’t understand or speak a complete thought. Unless someone physically stops him, he will hit and bite himself until he bleeds. He will spend his days naked in bed, looking at his iPad, pissing and shitting himself while masturbating. But tell me more about respecting his autonomy. When I met him, he lived with his parents, who’d hired aides to put clothes on him and make sure he didn’t hurt himself day and night. He would pick up and carry these grown women. It was only a matter of time before he seriously injured someone. None of them had disability insurance.

I don’t think it’s insane to posit that perhaps the possibility of having to spend every day of the rest of your life wiping the ass of someone who will never be able to say “I love you” has some impact on the drop in the fertility rate.

I want what’s best for the profoundly disabled. I want their lives to be as safe and pleasant as possible. What seems to make me different from everyone else is that I also care about the women (and others) who care for those individuals. I care about their siblings. I think their lives matter, too.

I think a system that completely ignores the wellbeing of caretakers is immoral. I don't think it’s right to pretend that caretakers’ opportunity costs are zero because most of them are women.

I think the right thing to do is to consider the costs to society, caretakers, and the profoundly disabled when discussing potential solutions. And I think when you do that, if you’re being honest, giving families the option to institutionalize their profoundly disabled family members strikes a much better balance than the status quo.

The coming cuts are going to dump millions of profoundly disabled individuals into jails, onto the streets, and into morgues. The best time to have had this conversation is 30 years ago. The second best time is now.