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Care to elaborate? Most experiences I had with it have been positive, but then, I never looked into it and it was always second hand experience. Like the state intervening for suicide endangered teenagers and taking responsibility for the son of someone I know know who has enough mental problems that he needs a Betreuer who looks out for his finances and interests and helps him to be able to have a somewhat normal live with a job and an apartment of his own. And the one time I needed some help, my visits to a psychiatrist were paid for me until I had dealt with it and didn't feel the need for any more visits - but that was a minor issue.
No centralized standards of care, leaving it entirely in the hand of the states what kind of laws to set, a quota on the number of licensed and authorized therapists who can work in a mixed public-private sector at any given time, a psychiatric system with too patients for the number of beds available, entirely insufficient ambulatory care that has rejected BPD patients in the past for being 'too difficult' for a therapist to deal with and casting people with a psychiatric disorder that is known to be very damaging entirely adrift. Since there's no centralized authority for therapists who are equipped to deal with patients with personality disorders, the expert care that these people need is essentially unavailable to them because there's no authority that can direct them anywhere. And with a relatively underfunded psychiatric department (which, by the by, is a persistent European problem), psychiatric hospitals will prioritize the patients they have room for who 'need it most,' leaving more people to get worse as their problems go untreated.
Adding to this is the persistent problem across Europe that access to psychological help (usually the step before full-on psychiatric intervention) is limited for those who can't afford to pay the full sum of a therapy programme by themselves, because Germany has a limited number of psychologists who are paid through health insurance, leaving a whole lot of people on the floor. Adding to this, the fact that certain diagnoses (like BPD or certain ASD's) are debilitating enough that it might qualify for a status as being partially disabled, that affects your health insurance premium significantly as well.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
The latter depends on what kind of health insurance you have. There is the Private health insurance were yes, the premiums go up. If you are in one of the state sponsored health insurance, those are ALWAYS based on how much you earn, and NOT on the state of your health. Meaning, if you earn a lot, you pay more, if you earn less, you pay less, if you don't earn anything, the state pays it for you. You are also forced to pay part of the cost of certain medicaments UNLESS you have a chronic condition. Then there is some sort of flat rate or they come for free.
Thus said, the insurance system is complicated and there are a lot of stumbling stone you might miss. And most likely it is easier to get health care if you have a private health insurance.
Otherwise I can imagine that we have an undersupply of psychiatrist because we have a general undersupply of doctors, especially in the more rural areas. And Germany in general has a kind of strange relationship to mental health.
Edited by Swanpride on Apr 6th 2019 at 6:46:12 AM
Just a harmless giant from a foreign land.
Given a certain state party recently added 'has received therapeutical care' as a reason for police scrutiny in investigation, I wonder why we still have these issues.
And because having a Black Zero ceritificate hanging on the wall for another year is obviously more important than actually spending some real money on this.
Edited by 3of4 on Apr 6th 2019 at 4:13:27 PM
"You can reply to this Message!"
To be honest, I have the impression that - as a reaction to the crimes commited during the Third Reich - our mental health system puts sometimes too much emphasis on the cooperation of the patients.
My uncle has been suffering from shizophrenia for a decades, and let us just say he has pulled a lot of stupid stuff over the years (thankfully nobody got hurt). Still my grandparents have taken care of him, and he visited them regulary. But at some point it was obvious that his health was deterioating. My concerned grandparents called again and again his doctors, if he was taking his medicine.They told them yes, despite the fact that he had not taken them for months (which they knew because he had to get them directly from his doctors). The doctors knew that my uncle was visiting his parents regularly, yet the were not allowed to tell them the truth.
To make things short, my uncle (usually a very gentle, peaceful soul) attacked my grandmother and if not for a stroke of luck, it might have come to the worst. He had to be forevibly dragged to a hospital, and he had to be administered drugs in such a dose that it permanently affected his health. And only after that incident was it legally possible for my grandparents to become his legal guardian (because he had refused this before). Honestly it was and still is infuriating. The doctors knew that he might become a danger to others, but were not allowed to act, and could not even warn his next of kin. If things had truly gone wrong, he might have been send to a mental hospital for life, additionally to the damage he could have caused to others. Even then it was a nightmare to settle things, he had to get a new home et al. And it almost broke my grandparents' heart.
Edited by Zarastro on Apr 6th 2019 at 4:44:45 PM
It has very little to do with the Third Reich, in all honesty. Some of these things are consequences of the confidentiality system, the levels of escalation needed for the ignoring of informed consent, and the broader scope of psychiatry reckoning with its own past.
Namely, if you've ever read about psychiatric institutions, they were extremely violent places that often treated the people interred within as being less than human. Involuntary medicalization to the point of utter non-functionality, non-consensual ECT treatments, often without a muscle relaxant, resulting in muscle cramps that could last for days afterward... The history of psychiatry is littered with stories of inhuman practice even before a certain moustachioed corporal ever decided to give euthanizing the mentally ill a go.
In this case, it's a case of doctor-patient confidentiality. If the doctor has been asked not to provide consent about a patient's medication to their next of kin, from a legal perspective, the doctor can't say anything. Since there was no indication that your uncle may be harmful to others before this (or at least I'm assuming so, based on your testimony and the reaction of the doctors), that confidentiality cannot, legally speaking, be broken, and there are no grounds to hospitalize him against his will. Psychiatry errs on the side of caution when the questions of hospitalizations and violence come up because so often in the past it's erred on the side of excess, with disastrous consequences.
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.
It is still unbelievable how far this was allowed to escalate. My uncle had never attacked anyone before, but he had caused some serious property damage before (which my grandparents paid for) and he was very clearly deranged the last time I saw him before the incident. He was a ticking time bomb, and everybody around him recognized this. But since he refused therapy, there was nothing we could do about it.
It should have been possible to grant legal custody to my grandparents after his third of so incarceration in a mental hospital. Instead German laws prohibit this from happening unless someone is injured or worse. At which point it is often too late. The system fails everybody here.
Edited by Zarastro on Apr 6th 2019 at 5:47:43 PM
He is right, though. The way the system is currently set up, someone has to be a danger to other or to him/herself in order to get institutionalized or put under the care of someone. So if someone refuses help even though said person is already living on the street, there is little which can be done simply because said person has the right to refuse said help and the threshold for "this person is too ill to make this decision" is pretty high.
Basically the worst which can happen to you is to be somewhat mentally ill with no family to look out for you.
In addition, older people whose capacity is no longer working as it should are often too proud to admit the fact. My godparent had a hell of a time to get her mother the help she needed because every time the social worker came for assessment, she did her very best to play up her state of health, even though she had already dementia at this point.
The upside is that there is a lot of effort made to avoid institutionalizing people needlessly, and not just because there is a limited capacity, there is a genuine goal to keep people as much in live as possible. The downside is that there are a lot of people falling through the cracks, one way or another.
The good news is that Suicide rates have halved since the 1980s. The bad news is that since then, they have been pretty stagnant, and there are other countries which do better (though also a lot which do even worse).
Sure, legally speaking the doctors acted like they had to. Which is why the system needs some changes to accomodate for the reality of mental illnesses. Because while the current systems holds up the liberty of the patience, it should also acknowledge that a mentally ill patient is usually not the best judge on what is best for him. The system itself leaves the patient alone, often with disastrous consequences.
The only reason why my uncle is not homeless today is because my grandparents paid for him again and again, and because they tried to preserve his social circle. Who knows what would have happenes if they had followed the advice of mostly everybody, and given up on him.
More proof that we REALLY have a systemic problem, especially in Eastern Germany:
Who knew that an art project would be helpful in flushing out questionable figures in positions of power...
So, I stumbled over this article...
I don't think that the German education system is as good as described, we really, really need to teach better media competency. But..wtf? Isn't it normale for schools to explain the stuff mentioned in the article? What the hell are other countries doing? Not teaching politics at all?
Oh, bother.
Yuuup.
Edited by M84 on May 18th 2019 at 9:18:24 PM
Disgusted, but not surprised
German Parliament Deems B.D.S. Movement Anti-Semitic
The nonbinding vote said the campaign to boycott Israeli products, along with the movement’s “Don’t Buy” stickers, recalled “the most terrible chapter in German history” and revived memories of the Nazi motto “Don’t buy from Jews.”
“The pattern of argument and methods of the B.D.S. movement are anti-Semitic,” the resolution stated, vowing not to fund any organizations that question Israel’s right to exist, call for a boycott of Israel or actively support B.D.S.
B.D.S., which was inspired by the South African anti-apartheid movement, has had several recent successes. In 2018, nearly two dozen artists pulled out of a music festival in Israel. Most recently, the B.D.S. movement has called on artists and fans to boycott the Eurovision Song Contest because Israel is the host.
The resolution, which mentioned “growing unease” in the German Jewish community as anti-Semitism has increased, was brought to Parliament by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union party and its Social Democratic coalition partner, as well as the liberal party and the Greens.
Crime statistics published by the German Interior Ministry on Tuesday showed that anti-Semitic crime and hate crime rose by 20 percent last year. The report found that nine in 10 anti-Semitic offenses were committed by people on the far-right.
The Palestinian B.D.S. National Committee said in a statement Friday that it “rejects all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism” and condemned what it called an “anti-Palestinian, Mc Carthyite and unconstitutional resolution passed by the German Parliament.”
“We call on people of conscience in Germany and beyond to defend the sanctity of universal human rights and freedom of expression by protecting the right to B.D.S.,” the statement read. “The academic and cultural boycott of Israel is strictly institutional and does not target individual Israelis.”
There were other critics, too. Some 60 academics signed an open letter, saying the motion formed part of a worrying trend of “labeling supporters of Palestinian human rights as anti-Semitic.”
It said the mixing of B.D.S. and anti-Semitism was supported by “Israel’s most right-wing government in history” and formed part of a strategy to delegitimize any attempt at international solidarity with the Palestinian cause.
But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel congratulated Parliament, known as the Bundestag, on its “important decision to recognize B.D.S. as an anti-Semitic movement and that it is forbidden to support it.”
“I particularly appreciate the Bundestag’s call on Germany to stop funding organizations that work against the existence of the State of Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said, “I hope this decision will lead to concrete action, and I call on other countries to adopt similar legislation.”
Yuli Edelstein, the speaker of the Israeli Parliament, tweeted: “Thank you #Bundestag! For the courageous and important decision! BDS is a dangerous, antisemitic movement. You are the first, but many others will follow in your footsteps.”
Germany’s Jewish organizations also welcomed the vote.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland had put forward a separate motion on Friday that called for a ban of the B.D.S. movement.
One of its lawmakers, Jürgen Braun, said his party was the real friend of Israel in the German Parliament. “Anti-Semitism comes from the left and from Islam,” he said.
The Af D abstained in the vote.
The Left Party also said it rejected the B.D.S. movement, but it refused to back Friday’s motion. In its own motion, the party called on the government to support efforts to find a peaceful two-state solution in the Middle East.
To learn about politics, you need to actively, as a student, choose to do either politics, history, economics and/or to some extent geography or media studies. As actual subjects. When you get to the choosing stage.
Or, you know... general studies. To a limited degree.
Yeah. Most people don't really know how elections work until they've voted in, maybe, five or six of them? Let alone knowing how local government works beyond the front desk staff of support centres.
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Nope. You're expected to pick it up via cultural osmosis or the lessons you might have got on WWII, but which you probably zoned out of, at 13/14 that focused on the rise of Hitler, but didn't really seem applicable to anything in your actual life, because it usually isn't made explicitly clear to you.
So, yeah: you're relying on the media. Or your parents.
Edited by Euodiachloris on May 18th 2019 at 2:53:34 PM
Well, yeah, that isn't unusual even WITH politic lessons because pupils have a tendency to zone out when the topic comes up. But aren't there at least basic "this is how populist movement work" lessons? Anything? How do you teach history without this basic knowledge?
Maybe Germany should sanction Israel. If nothing else, it is high time to stop all weapon exports into the region. But I don't think stickers are the right way to get there. If the movement would focus on showing the plight of the Palestinians it would have better cards.
Merkel has done a lot for Israel during her time as chancellor, and it is nice knowing that the German parliament is of a similar mind-set.
But now Merkel is on her way out, and it would be great if she would show more courage. She could for example request her government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital. That would be a great final gift for the German-Israel relations.
If you call gifting them weapons as "supporting Israel"....
No, she shouldn't. In fact, it is high time for Germany to NOT support the government of Israel any longer. Not as long as the hardliners are in power, doing everything they can to kill the people of Palestine.
That doesn't mean though that it should support actions which can lead to anti-Semitism within Germany. German Jews need to feel as secure as possible.
It's a difficult balance to keep, especially since anti-Semitism is often carefully hidden behind good points regarding the actions of the government of Israel. But the logic "not supporting them is anti-semitic" doesn't work either.
Supplying them with weapons to secure their existence is of course a way of supporting them. Something Germany can be very proud off.
I think the point is that with the current government of Israel, they shouldn't.
Edited by TerminusEst on May 18th 2019 at 7:49:58 AM
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele
Agreed.
Supplying arms to fascists isn't admirable (which is why I wish Westminster would quit the habit, too).
Things change over time. Israel's government... well... has turned into the monster it supposedly hates.
Edited by Euodiachloris on May 18th 2019 at 3:55:43 PM
Israel doesn't need more weapons. What it needs is a moderate government which is actually interested in peace instead of trying to destroy a whole population. We are talking about a government which bombs schools.
The current government is indeed reprehensible, but the security of Israel must not be preconditioned by temporary factors like this (because as a democracy, Netanyahu will be gone one day).
And let us not fall prey to false equivalence here. Even with the Netanyahu government, Israel remains a shining beacon of democracy and human rights in the ME.
They are bombing schools. They are systematically killing the Palestinians by withholding water from them. They are taking more land than they are supposed to. They are NOT a shining beacon of anything at the moment.
Edited by Swanpride on May 18th 2019 at 8:16:48 AM
Schools from which rockets are fired. Let us not pretend that any government would react differently in similar situation (constant rocket attacks).
Despite all of that, Israel remains the only country in the region which offers its' ethnic minorities the opportunity to freely participate in public life, including standing for the highest offices. LBGT-people enjoy more rights in Israel than in some European countries. Israel has proven itself that it can live with its' minorities peacefully, if given the chance.It is also the only country in the region that has even an interest in doing so.
And while I am disappointed that they reelected Netanyahu, it is also somewhat understandable given the situation they find themselves in. Not only are they surrounded by enemies and potential enemies, the recent events during the Arab Spring has reinforced the impression that if anything, things are going to get worse. Because the forces that have tried to overthrow the Arab despots have often proven themselfs as even worse regarding their attitude towards Israel (i.e. IS, the Muslim brotherhood).
Edited by Zarastro on May 18th 2019 at 5:52:51 PM
Much like with Poland or Hungary, you behave badly, you get the stick.
Take it to the Israel/Palestine thread if you want to keep going on with this as a more general topic.
Si Vis Pacem, Para Perkele