Television: Tragic neglect of two nations

The closing of psychiatric hospitals in the United States and New Zealand have left similar gaps in the system, Nowhere to Go showed.

Some things don't change. Especially the plight of parents with children in mental crisis.

On Tuesday,7.30pm on Prime on 60 Minuteswas a disturbing United States story titled Nowhere to Go featuring Virginia State Senator Creigh Deeds.

Deeds was slashed and stabbed repeatedly by his 24-year-old son Gus Deeds who had been struggling for years with mental illness.

He and his son had been in a hospital emergency room just hours before the attack but didn't get the help they needed.

Once again the mental health care problem is exposed.

The problems that started as they did here in New Zealand with all major psychiatric hospitals closing and mental health care referred into the community.

From a Wanganui perspective, even though it was decade before Lake Alice Psychiatric Hospital closed its doors for the final time merging patients into the community, people were dubious and couldn't see it working.

But similar to the United States, the powers-that-be saw institutions as a negative look upon the mental health sector.

This was even though these specialised institutions had catered for all sorts of mental illnesses, and people from the young to criminally insane to geriatric.

And of course there are those zillion horror stories about the abusive treatment patients received, including ECT (electroconvulsive therapy).

This programme said the vast majority of mental patients were not violent, which was true according to any psych practitioner from those days and nowadays as well.

However, this story was about the few who were a danger to themselves and others.

These days such patients mostly have nowhere to go, particularly in a crisis.

Most are turfed out of A&E departments in the United States within hours with nowhere to go but home.

And this father is one of many who bears the scars on his soul and on his face. He couldn't save his boy because there was no hospital for him to go to. As Deeds said, the American system failed his son and was constantly failing hundreds of others.

"If only Gus could have been hospitalised that same night then sent into long-term care the whole tragic disaster could have been avoided.

"I could have worked to get Gus, who was bipolar, into some sort of long-term care," he said.

In the years since major psychiatric institutions were closed in the United States Deeds said adequate local facilities had never been built.

And getting an emergency appointment with a psychiatrist will take up to three months.

It's not so different here.

It was creepy watching this programme because of the similarities with our home towns.

Listening to this dad was like the dozens of parents, siblings and children we've heard over the years who say if only, if only ... it didn't need to happen.

This was a strong thoughtful piece of television without any histrionics.

Sadly again another family is left with stigma and eternal heartache ... the "if only" scenario.