Tag: Suicide

Trump’s Prescription for Poverty: Forced Psychiatry and the Criminalization of Homelessness

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)1 Comment

Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people

Related:

Trump Pushes Policies That ‘Treat Homelessness and Mental Illness as a Crime’

New Research Shows Risks of Coercive Psychiatric Treatment

A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is raising difficult but necessary questions about a practice that affects hundreds of thousands of lives each year: involuntary psychiatric hospitalization.

…

This equates to a 79% increase in risk of being charged with a violent crime, and almost a doubled risk of dying by suicide or overdose, in the three months following evaluation for hospitalization.

The researchers also found hospitalization often caused destabilization. It led to declines in employment and earnings, and increased use of homeless shelters. It did not lead to better outpatient care or more consistent medication use.

Tricking Veterans: Using Suicide and Mental Health Struggles as a Guise for Privatizing the VA

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

While attention remains focused on the looming crisis of Department of Veterans Affairs employees facing termination, an even more ominous threat to veterans’ health care advances unnoticed through the halls of Congress

Tricking Veterans: Using Suicide and Mental Health Struggles as a Guise for Privatizing the VA

Previously:

Speak Up Before VA Health Care Is Gutted #Project2025

“I’m sorry we don’t have office supplies. We have to bring in our own pens and paper and marking pens, because the VA doesn’t have it.”

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

‘These cuts will hurt veterans.’ Concerns voiced about Trump administration VA budget reductions.

He said that through the years they were able to modernize and now he relies on the VA Hospital in Madison for his primary health care.

He said he was there recently and became alarmed to hear about cuts now under the Trump administration.

“When I was up there six weeks ago for an incident, I asked one of the nurses, ‘Can I get a pad of paper and a pen to just write some stuff down in the interim between the examinations,’” the veteran recounted. “And she said, ‘I’m sorry we don’t have office supplies. We have to bring in our own pens and paper and marking pens, because the VA doesn’t have it.’”

…

“Don’t just thank me for my service. Tell me what you’re doing to make this country better,” he said.

Elon Musk’s Cruel Cuts Expose What MAGA Really Thinks of Veterans

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Elon Musk’s Cruel Cuts Expose What MAGA Really Thinks of Veterans

Key takeaways:

  • 60 percent of the 16 million Americans who have served in the military supported Donald Trump, and 55 percent believed his policies would benefit veterans, but many veterans have been fired due to massive cuts by Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
  • Nearly 6,000 veterans have already lost their jobs due to the cuts, and an estimated 100,000 veterans could be out of work when all is said and done, with around 36,000 disabled veterans facing unemployment and difficulty in finding private-sector jobs.
  • The federal government plays a critical role for veterans, providing professional opportunities and support for those transitioning from military to civilian life, but the mass firing of federal workers, including many veterans, will have devastating effects on communities and individuals across the country.

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban + Trauma trigger ⚠️

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Five transgender service members speak out as Trump pushes military ban

There are not many people who want to serve anymore. We’re in a recruiting and retention crisis across the board. It doesn’t matter what service you’re going in, they’re having a hard time getting people in and they’re having a hard time keeping people. And to want to push somebody out that has given their entire adult life to an organization, but then also to the nation, it’s just really unfortunate and sad that for everything that I’ve done, the hard work that I’ve done, the work that I’ve done, for the government to just kind of say that you are no longer able to serve. We just don’t want you because you’re trans.

…

Rand [Corporation] — who had predicted that it could cost up $150,000 per service member per year to have transgender folks serve — went back after trans folks were allowed to serve openly, to see what the costs actually were. And it was less than $1,000 per transgender service member per year, which I don’t need to tell you, is like an average military service member’s prescription costs per year.

…

For a lot of trans people, the military is the only option for them to to survive, to get out of the situations they’re in, and again, we’re part of that one percent of the population that has sworn to defend the country. Why would you want to not allow them to do that?

…

People do tend to isolate transgender medicine as this like wildly difficult thing, but it’s actually not. It’s fairly straightforward and basic for most people. Are there folks who have complications? Sure, but we have folks who have any number of orthopedic surgeries who have complications. Or we try to manage their allergies, and the solution that we start with isn’t where we end. You can have high cholesterol or high blood pressure, and maybe we put you on medications, maybe we say you need to change your diet, and we work down [to address the question of] how do we take care of you? Because we need you on the team.

Related:

Read More »

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The vote in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29th November, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm by the bourgeois media. Photos featuring jubilant campaigners for voluntary euthanasia were plastered across web front pages. The real promise of this Bill is far from joyful for many. The Bill, which will now go to parliamentary committee with the opportunity for amendment, if finally passed into law, would represent a major political attack at a time of huge inequality and significant shortages in access to health care, social care, support for independent living, and end of life care, including adequate, high quality palliative care. Despite all this – and the loud opposition of disabled people’s organisations in particular – this measure is still mistakenly understood by some on the left as merely a matter of personal choice: an enabler rather than a threat.

Socialists should back support for living not assisted suicide