I had a treat this morning by looking out the window to see a female Cardinal eating the berries from what others would call a “weed” — Pokeweed.  The berries have dried up after a long summer’s growth and the cardinal was happily nibbling on them.

The pokeweed is not something to trifle with – it can be poisonous if it is not cooked properly.  This page states that if one wants to consume it, that it must be boiled twice with fresh water each time.  And one can eat the leaves – but only if it is new in the Spring, because poisons develop as it matures.

We also consider the dandelion to be a weed, but it is a healthy food that indicated in fighting cancer.  The Native Americans use it in the Spring as a detoxer. It’s packed with Vitamin A — more than a carrot!

I think we need to re-think the idea of “weeds” and look at the healing properties of plants instead of whether they “look pretty”.

Domestic violence and rape are known around the world, but Saudi Arabia appears to be the only country that it is legal, as in this case of a father brutalizing his daughter.  Good God.  Again, religion is used to justify what this beast did to his daughter, but no God would justify such acts.  Do Unto Others is in Islam, as well….

Or, as he puts it, “just hit the damn deer“.   WTH?

I am right in the middle of deer country.  There’s not a week that goes by that some poor deer has been struck by a vehicle.  And yet, in over thirty years of driving, I have not hit a deer.  I know, I know, it could always happen tomorrow, but I think my track record is pretty good.

The closest encounter I’ve ever had was several years ago at the beginning of deer hunting season.  I noticed a deer running towards the highway, so I slowed down.  Sure enough, the deer ran right in front of where I would have been had I not slowed down.  The poor thing had a look of terror on its face from being hunted, I presume.

Other times, I have seen deer near the road, and slowed down accordingly.  It was almost a nightly occasion that I would see them when driving home from work late at night.  I knew their favorite spots and looked for them to walk out in front of me.

There is nothing in this article about driver responsibility:  slowing down to the speed limit, not talking on the cell phone, not texting while driving.  He only gives them a little responsibility in not paying attention and tailgating.

The most deer deaths I have seen have been on a four lane highway that people now use as a race track.  It didn’t used to be that way —  the increase in speed has seen an increase in deer deaths.

And Indiana does not have the same laws as Wisconsin –a deer will lay dead by the side of the road until nature takes its course.  I suspected that the poor were making use of roadkill, and this article confirms that — at least in Wisconsin.

Edited:. The DNR does have a program where poor folks can be gifted with a deer.

So now we have another report of a schizophrenic man decapitating his mother and throwing her body on to the lawn…

Eliot Rodger (whose sense of entitlement mirrors the rape culture society).

Colby Sue Weathers, who killed her father. Again, a parent tried in vane to get help for their mentally ill child, and the system turned their backs on them.

The above articles are ignoring the elephant in the room:  the Governors who closed mental hospitals or severely limited the beds available which has led to schizophrenics being put out on the streets.

But look, ma, we saved some tax dollerz!!  /snark

An article in Mother Jones about this issue. Best I’ve seen so far.

The constant presence of other people continued to agitate Terri; within six months she was thrown out. Using Terri’s Social Security income and Section 8 housing assistance, my grandparents got her a duplex in Painesville. She was evicted. She got another apartment, and was evicted again. Two more group homes in Cleveland, evicted. She would go door to door, “bothering” tenants. She would lie on the sidewalk in her bathing suit. And she would always, always, always be blasting music. Another apartment, in Mentor: evicted. With CPI long since closed by now, and hospitalization no longer an option, Terri was running out of places to go.

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In 1980, Jimmy Carter signed the Mental Health Systems Act, aimed at filling the gap. But a year later Ronald Reagan, already known for eviscerating mental-health services as governor of California, took office and gutted it, then decreased federal mental-health spending 30 percent and shifted the burden to state and local governments. By 1985, the federal government covered just 11 percent of mental-health agency budgets. When the crucial community services that the mentally ill were supposed to receive as the hospitals closed failed to materialize, more and more of them ended up on the streets. By the mid-1980s, pretty much everyone in America agreed that deinstitutionalization was not going well.

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“The average county in Ohio got $4.20 per person” in state mental-health funding in fiscal 2012, he tells me in his office overlooking Lake Erie. But in Cuyahoga? They got 20 cents per person. Meanwhile, demand for beds in homeless shelters, along with emergency room and jail admissions, is exploding. “The prison population is the largest cost in Ohio,” Denihan shakes his head. “The largest mental-health hospital is our jail system.”

[…] As of 2006, 1.3 million of America’s mentally ill were housed right back where they were in Dorothea Dix’s day: in prisons and jails.

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[…] (The LA County Jail in California) …Where deinstitutionalization was pioneered under Gov. Ronald Reagan with the 1967 Lanterman-Petris-Short Act, which made it vastly more difficult to commit people, and where the rate of mentally ill in the criminal-justice system doubled just one year after it took effect. Where, often, the severely mentally ill live in jail for three to six months because they’re waiting for a bed to open up in a psychiatric facility

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From “Louise” in the comments:

My Aunt was a patient of Agnew State Hospital in Santa Clara county in the 50’s.  She was diagnosed as  schizophrenic when she was fairly young.  Unfortunately my aunt was released from Agnew when all of the funding was cut (via Regan) and supposedly transferred to a group home.  From then on life became hell for her and our family.  She wasn’t violent, but would throw things at people and ended up in the county lockup for 72 hours more than once…then she’d back on the streets.  She quit taking her meds and quit the group home fairly quickly.  I let her live with me for about a month and it was a strange experience.  I felt a lot empathy for her, but she would not allow anyone to help.  She wandered up and down California for many years, avoiding her family.  She eventually ended up back in her home down and died in the early 90’s.  It was a sad sad life.  She lost all of her children to the state, never was able to rest from the hallucinations that plagued her for so long.  There was no help available-no one we could go to, to get help.  It certainly hasn’t gotten any better for people like her.    

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As the article notes, Cook County Jail is the largest mental health provider, with the jailer threatening to sue the State of Illinois.  They are not set up to deal with the mentally ill.  When the schizophrenic guy in Fort Wayne was losing it, I called the building manager, who refused to get involved, and wanted me to call the police.  I knew that the police would not be effective in handling this guy.  And sure enough, they came, saw that he was stacking stuff out into the community hallway and tearing stuff off of apartment doors and walls….and did nothing.  It took another call to them later in the day when they finally took him to a mental health facility.  He was gone for some months.  He was violent towards himself up until that time.  But now he was going outward, and only a mental health professional would recognize the warning sign that he needed to be put in a facility.

And I strongly disagree with Cindy Gyori in this article.  She states that the mentally ill should not be institutionalized, but rather there should be public funding for public housing.  I totally disagree with that– I saw that happening in Fort Wayne, and the public housing folks are not equipped, either, to handle the mentally ill.  Their attitude is just to look the other way.  My own guesstimate is that a third of the people in the building I was in were mentally ill.

There are many advocates for the mentally ill being able to live their lives, but I don’t see a lot of advocates for those whom have to live among the mentally ill.  I suspect if these folks were to be forced to live with the mentally ill, 24/7, they would have a change of heart.  It’s a whole different ball game when you’re living amongst the mentally ill than when you’re 8 hour job lets you go home to have some respite.

The article states the majority of Gyori’s patients are not schizophrenics, but suffering from PTSD, anxiety, depression, etc., which are not on the level of schizophrenics, and I would agree that there is no reason for them to be committed to mental institutions…unless, of course, they show signs of violence towards others.

Nobody wants to go back to the days where mental patients were mistreated–locked away and forgotten.  But the pendulum has swung in the other direction too far, in my view, where they are committing such heinous violent acts that it requires action.  The state hospital that I worked at had clean, modern facilities for the patients.  At one time, it was a little city of itself–had a bakery, their own farm where they grew food for the population, a fire dept., printing facility, painting shop, wood shop, etc.  The patients helped out on the farm, which I believe would be good for them if there were restrictions and protections in place. They would get physical exercise along with fresh air and learn a skill  — farming.  Whether they got out or not, they could feel they mattered because they contributed and they learned something.

And I can say that this mental hospital was set up to be quiet, serene place to rest and get away from the world.  Some people responded to this and eventually got well.  Some didn’t.  But this serenity is being chipped away by politicians who couldn’t care less about the mentally ill nor do they value the set up of generations past.

Again, I ask that toxicity be evaluated.  Heavy metals, especially mercury, are associated with mental illness and specifically schizophrenia.  Why would someone like Houston suddenly have difficulty?  Was he exposed to mercury?  Did he have vaccinations yearly after receiving three times as many vaccinations, while an infant, as older generations? The age of these violent schizophrenics cannot be ignored–the younger generation has been exposed to much, much more toxins than my generation.  As the video on vaccinations I posted earlier states, since the 80s, vaccinations have increased dramatically, along with autism, another neurological issue.  This cannot be ignored.

Mercury is cumulative, folks, as a little bit will not likely produce toxic symptoms, but the damage is done little by little with each exposure. And with each exposure, the damage is greater– a snowball effect, if you will.  A snowball on steroids.

And it’s not just vaccinations nor amalgams, but coal ash, which contains arsenic, lead, and mercury.  Chemicals themselves cause damage to the gut, and the gut is linked to brain function (gluten intolerance can also lead to schizophrenia if the undiagnosed person continues consuming it).  Then there are GMO’s which damage the gut, too.

All of this is cumulative, so symptoms might not show up immediately, but after years of exposure.  I see Houston as a possible victim of all of this and he should absolutely be evaluated for toxic overload.

And if you think I’m grasping at straws, think about the gals that had eating disorders– they have always been diagnosed as mental disorders, but it was found out they had malabsorption problems with zinc, and when liquid zinc was administered, they suddenly lost the desire to harm themselves by starving or throwing up.  it is simply amazing how lack of proper nutrition can mess up body chemistry and the brain.  But this is not considered by those that can help them.  And, as we saw with this story, the hospital that had an eating disorders clinic withheld this information from the patients so that they could continue making profits off of them.

Shane Ellison mentions EcoHearth.com on his own website, so I thought I’d check it out.  I’m struggling right now, but this site lifted my spirits.  Wonderful to read of kindred spirits.…

I have found myself, someone who used to think that only store-bought gifts were superior and meant that I cared…ha.  Now I know the great joy in giving something that I’ve made myself –especially if I have made it well.

And if the receiver of the gift does not share in that joy…well, that is their issue to deal with.  Perhaps they will come to see the shallowness of store-bought versus homemade, perhaps not.  That is their journey to make.