Class session lasts from March 9 at 6:00 p.m. to March 17 at 5:59 p.m., but the discussion boards will not be graded until after March 24th.
This page describes what you should do in this eighth session.
Objectives of this session
Time Budget for 11 hours
3h 30m Class meeting on Zoom and time spent on discussion boards.
1h 25m Watch the documentary on mental health services: Bedlam (2020).
1h 40m Read the excerpts from George Ives’ A History of Penal Methods (1914).
3h 30m Class meeting on Zoom and time spent on discussion boards.
1h 15m Write mid-semester self-evaluation and submit it.
40m Study lecture on Health Care, Developmental Disabilities, Mental Health, etc.
30m Take a test.
This is my plan for what we will do in our Zoom meeting on March 10th:
Excerpts from A History of Penal Methods by George Ives (a distant relation of mine; my great-grandfather’s second cousin; the only male Ives of his and the following generations who survived The Great War and the Second World War). Read this to understand: 1) patterns in how prisoners and persons with serious mental illness have been treated through history; 2) the reasons Ives gives for why people have treated prisoners and criminals and persons with mental illness as they have done; 3) the evidence from the 19th century and first years of the 20th century (or lack of evidence) for how strict punishments may prevent crime; and 4) some general idea of the history of how society has treated persons with mental illness and persons who are convicted of committing crimes.
You must watch the documentary Bedlam, which is about 1 hour and 25 minutes in duration.
You must listen to (and watch) a 40 minute lecture about mental health care and health care.
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Lecture on Services: Mental Health, Disability, Health, and Substance Abuse. |
You can download it as a larger movie (mp4 file), a smaller movie (mov file), or just look at the slides without my commentary and lecture.
The FY 2020 State of Illinois budget allocations is described in greater detail on the class blog.
The mid-semster self-evaluation should be written and submitted this week. Consider it to be an assignment like a reaction paper, only the topic will be your efforts in the class, what you are learning in the class, what you hope to accomplish in the second half of the course, and what you ought to do to achieve the objectives of this course.
The second policy paper is due soon (but not in this session). I recommend you allocate about two hours to work on the second policy paper during this 8th session of the course.
Discussion Question 1:
Discussion Question 8-1: Check in. Tell us what you are grateful for. What is something good in your life, or in the world, and you are feeling appreciative of this good thing? And, generally how is your life going, and what are you thinking these days?
Discussion Question 2: Homelessness
Discussion Question 8-2: Following up on the Session 7 readings from last week, what is your understanding of how much it would cost to end homelessness (reducing the number of homeless from about 500,000 to 800,000 down to 50,000 to 80,000? You can consider this question in terms of national policy, policy in Illinois, or policy and services in the city or county where you live. Having estimated what it would cost, consider the budgets of the government and various charitable non-profits and so forth, and determine whether, in your estimation, the resources exist in the public and non-profit sector to end homelessness. What would it take to achieve an end to homelessness, and it could it be done? If you think homelessness could be ended, what strategy do you suppose might get us to end it? If you think homelessness could not be ended, what is making it impossible to end it?
Discussion Question 3: Inequality
Discussion Question 8-3: Following up on the session lecture on inequality and taxes and incomes, explain to us what your idea of the optimal wealth distribution would be in a society? How should the fact that we need incentives and rewards, as well as consequences for poor performance (in other words, we need some inequality) be balanced against the fact that we need some degree of equality and some counter-force to the tendency of wealthy people to set up a system where they accumulate more wealth and low-income people cannot easily catch up or get ahead? What level of redistribution, if any, is fair? For example, think about the total taxes paid by the poor (sales, income, property, payroll) and the benefits they receive (Medicaid, EITC, SNAP, and possibly TANF, SSI, assistance with child care expenses, college costs, etc.). Compare that to the taxes paid by the wealthy. Should incomes over $200,000 or $500,000 or $1,000,000 be taxed at high rates, and how high—50%, 66%, 90%? What would be fair, in your estimation? Why does it seem fair to you? What moral argument would you use to justify the level of redistribution you think is optimal?
Discussion Question 4: Mental Health Care in history and Bedlam
Discussion Question 8-4: You have read some material by George Ives about the treatment of persons with mental illness in historical periods, and you have seen the documentary Bedlam about treatment for persons with serious mental illness in the period from 2013-2019. How have things improved and how are problems that existed in history still with us today?
Discussion Question 5: Some of the observations made by Ives
Discussion Question 8-5: Consider these three passages from the reading you were assigned:
...And what of the really mad ? — irritable, violent, irrational, helpless, often with as little control over the functions of the body as on the workings of the mind. We can imagine what their state became when left in the hands of ignorant practitioners and brutal attendants, with chains and instruments of restraint convenient and ready....
...That the governing classes, the sound, the privileged and prosperous, should pause and reflect—that they should really consider the root-causes of crime, and seriously try and mean to make an end of them—was a remedy too revolutionary and uncomfortable to be even dreamed of throughout those selfish drunken decades of the nineteenth century!...
...Why was the criminal moth, although maimed and singed, continually drawn back to the penal candle, often to perish miserably against the flame? Because he was drawn back by the force of circumstances; because in most of the cases his will was weak and the force was strong, and he could not help it. No one will deny that the punishments decreed, and possibly awaiting, were dreaded beyond expression, but they had (evidently) been established on crude false theories by men who did not know (or care) about human nature, and so, when dealing with living people, they did not work....
In my opinion, these three passages, (and there were many more in the assigned readings from his book) illustrate three claims about human nature. Please pick one (or two or all three) and give in your own words the claim Ives is making about human nature, and how it applies in his time, and how that claim might still apply in our own time.
Discussion Question 6: Bedlam
Discussion Question 8-6: Consider what you learned by watching Bedlam. Share with us some of the factual insights you took from the time you spent attentively watching this documentary. Then, share with us some of the emotional or intuitive insights or impressions the film gave you. Were there particular scenes, stories, or facts shared in the context of stories that hurt? Did the film provoke any outrage, sorrow, or resolve? How did the film accomplish this?
Discussion Question 7: Homelessness
Discussion Question 8-7: One theme in this week’s material is the idea that our society offers inadequate support and care for persons with mental illnesses or substance abuse problems. Our health care for many people seems adequate or good, but there are still many persons whose health care is not adequate, despite our system of care being very expensive (calculated in Illinois as over $8,000 per capita in 2014). We seem to do a better job in caring for persons with developmental disabilities, although no one would claim our existing system in that quarter is entirely satisfactory. To what cause or reason to you attribute the inadequacies of our care systems? I offered some opinions about a lack of political will in my lecture on mental health and substance abuse treatment, and attributed this problem partly to the low priority our society gives to helping persons with mental illness or substance abuse problems. Are there are other reasons beyond that? Even if “low priorities” explain the flaws in our policies and services, what is it that allows these priorities to be so low?
Discussion Question 8: What do you learn from the web?
Discussion Question 8-8: Look over any one of the following five websites, and share with the class at least one fact or insight you gained by studying what you found on the website:
a) The Center for Disease Control’s information about Developmental Disabilities (https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/developmentaldisabilities/index.html).
b) The National Institute of Mental Health website (https://www.nimh.nih.gov/index.shtml)
c) The National Alliance on Mental Illness website (https://www.nami.org/Home#)d) The Mental Illness Policy website, (https://mentalillnesspolicy.org/ )
e) The Bazelon Center’s website (http://www.bazelon.org/)Discussion Question 9: One Policy Idea
Discussion Question 8-9: Please come up with one policy idea for a way we could improve services or policies concerning persons with mental illnesses or developmental disabilities. Share your policy idea and discuss why it would improve the situation and help us put social work values into practice.
Discussion Question 10: Preparation for the final exam in session 8
Discussion Question 8-10: Look up the answers for these questions:
1) What is the average four-week (monthly) benefit in the regular Unemployment Insurance program?
2) What is the maximum monthly SNAP benefit for households with no income that are,
- a single individual household?
- a two person household?
- a three-person household?
- a four-person household?
3) What is the average monthly SNAP benefit per person among households who receive benefits?
4) What is the average monthly SNAP benefit per SNAP-receiving household?
5) About how much is the annual federal public expenditure on unemployment insurance? Note that this is not counting state contributions to the state accounts in the unemployment trust fund (UTF) or any other state supplements to the Unemployment Insurance program. You can probably find good information at the Congressional Budget Office
6) What percentage of the population identifies that they have some Hispanic ethnicity?
7) About how many persons are receiving Medicare benefits?
8) In Illinois (in the Central Region), if a single mother of sound mind and body with no income and two dependent children in her home receives TANF, what is the benefit level she could get?
9) What is the poverty rate for persons under 18 years-old in America?
10) How much do the earned income tax credit and child tax credit help to reduce poverty in the USA? (look for any reports about how many persons or households are lifted out of poverty through their EITC benefits, perhaps from a study conducted on tax year 2013 incomes)
Activities
Here is what I expect you to do this week
Supplemental readings related to health care system
