Today I drove a friend to the Orthopedic Hospital of Wisconsin for a surgery procedure on her arm. I had heard about the Heart Hospital in Milwaukee but did not know we had a hospital devoted to bone repair.

Later this morning I was talking with the a director at the County Mental Health Complex, which is. However, they cannot admit patients who are not a “danger to self and others”, the standard in Wisconsin for involuntary commitment. This means persons with acute mental health crises really do not, without proper insurance and without consenting have no way to go and often end up in the County Jail or House of Corrections where about 400 of the around 960 inmates have serious mental illnesses. Our jail become our institutions for sick persons with brain illnesses.

The director mentioned how nice it would be to have a psychiatric hospital for people with mental illness that need a hospital stay. I agreed but said how nice it would be if a person in an acute mental health crisis could be treated like any other patient acutely sick and be brought to the ER of a Hospital. The fact is there is no big money in treatment of mental illnesses for people with poor or no insurances. A leader of another Mental Health advocacy group pointed out to me that if there was money in mental health treatment all the hospitals will do it.

I heard today that one of the most profitable industries in the USA is the health care industry. There is big money profits for insurance companies and inexpensive and ineffective health care for the rest of us.

When the largest institutions in the County for persons with mental illnesses is the County Jail and the County House of Correction what does that say for our society, bones matter over brains.

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