Jackson Jambalaya

If I needed another reason to drop The Elite, The Mayflower and Parlor Market from my regular schedule, this rite-cheer is damned sure IT.

Who can investigate this shit from the Whitfield angle? The Attorney General's office has a division that handles abuse of the mentally ill. They're quick to dispatch an investigative crew to nursing homes and residential psychiatric facilities for youth. Let's see how they respond to 'bus station drop-offs of adults'.

I'm all for more funding for mental health. However, as I understand it, either a court decision or changes to the laws have made it so that mental health facilities can't hold patients indefinitely. Even if they really need to be there.

And that is why I go to Table 100 or Tico's. I used to go to Elite, Mayflower, and Parlor Market and the places are still good but the city makes the experience as a whole not worth it. Parking downtown and walking to eat is a running a gauntlet of mentally ill and panhandlers.

Where did he get the jump rope?

Well I, for one, will keep going downtown. Almost sorry I missed this "entertainment". Poor guys. They didn't deserve that kind of treatment from the "unnamed" mental institution.

By the way, KF, it appears from the pix that he did not, technically, "take off his clothes". He took off his shirt, if he was wearing one, then pulled down his pants. Same general effect, of course, but may how he was smart enough to stay where he could cover up the "essentials" quickly and easily if needed, which appears to be just what happened.

KF, this has nothing to do with funding of mental health programs. You could triple the funding and these folks still can't be institutionalized.

Little known fact - the Department of Mental Health is the largest state agency when measu red by employees. It's employment tripled between 1990 and 2003 with current number of employees almost 9000. More money or more employees cannot change the fact that thsee guys cannot be kept in an institution. I find it deplorable that Whitfield thinks they should use the Jackson MS bus station as a dumping ground, but other than pushing them out the front gate to join the crazy folks already occupying Rankin County as citizens, what should they do with them?

I don't think they can help themselves, so I have sympathy for them.

Our mental system has always been f--d up. I guess it always will be.

IIRC a person can only be committed against their will for 72 hours unless someone obtains a court order stating that they are a clear and present danger to themselves or others. Running around nekkid downtown does not meet that criteria, so they can request a discharge 72 hours after being committed.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

More disgusting behavior from your capitol city. What’s next; strip joints on capitol street?

one of these gentlemen actually came IN the Parlor Market, where he was asked repeatedly to leave and then started grabbing drinks off a table. He was removed, after spending at least 2 minutes in the restaurant in a very agitated state and yelling at staff that did try to calmly get him to leave

I feel sorry for them, too. They are mentally ill and need help.

BTW, has anyone seen the homeless woman who wears a homemade black and white nun outfit recently? She's been roaming downtown for years, bless her heart. I haven't seen her for at least a year.

A few weeks ago, after my friends truck was burglarized in broad daylight during lunch hour at Hal and Mals, we were talking with the very nice and very professional responding JPD officer. He told one of their biggest problems down town is surrounding municipalities who dump there destitute on High street or at the bus station.


He said they have seen vehicles from as far away as Vicksburg dumping destitute persons in Jackson... so it doesn’t surprise me that the unarmed, state funded hospital would do it too....

Yup. He wore a red shirt.

KF, what the hell do you mean with "we need to fund mental health?" What we need to do is cut more taxes and put money back in the pockets of the working people. These people with mental health problems need to get over it and work hard like the rest of us.

I recently watched a rerun of Law & Order where a mental patient who was dropped off at the subway killed someone. I guess it could happen in real life here.

I certainly will continue to go to the Mayflower. Don't care for Elite or hideously over priced Parlor Market. The problem is that the laws need to address the problem of the mentally ill. It is not their fault that they are that way. Most of them are not violent, just nutty.

It’s as if deinstitutionalizing mental health treatment has had predictable consequences for public safety and quality of life.

12:24 has obviously never had to deal with a family member with mental illness. They can't "get over it" and the medications to help them are very expensive. Plus, there's nowhere for them to live when they cannot live at home due to their behavior and the safety of other family members.

The jails are horrible places for the mentally ill. They are not equipped to do anything for them. Health issues in jail are not attended to. Meds which are classified "controlled substances" are not allowed in jail, so the mentally ill person has the additional problem of going cold turkey from one or more medications which are prescribed for their conditions. The withdrawal is horrible.

1:21 are you familiar with the term "sarcasm"? Look it up.

Throwing folks out of mental health places started with Reagan, this is nothing new.

You gotta be pretty damn athletic to jump rope with your pants around your ankles.

"It’s as if deinstitutionalizing mental health treatment has had predictable consequences for public safety and quality of life."

Who could have predicted that forcing institutions to allow flagrantly medically ill people to make their own decisions, including to stop psychoactive medications or refuse admission, would result in mentally ill people living on the streets, unable to care for themselves. I mean, really, who could have seen that coming?

Greyhound therapy works if you work it.

Quit lying 2:12pm....it wasn't Reagan. It was Carter and a democrat congress that freed the loons. Reagan wasn't in office in 1980. Gotta love the marxist revisionist history attempts though. One day, it will be Nixon that enslaved people with welfare and destroyed the black family unit, not Johnson.

Last two times my wife and I went to Elite for dinner, homeless guys approached us asking for money in the Elite parking lot. Food wasn't that good either. Will not be going back. Still enjoy the Mayflower Cafe.

2:51 Reagan's policies and budgets did it buddy, don't try rewriting history.

We are not allowed to have looney bins in this country anymore. The nearest downtown is the new looney bin

Has been a problem for years but yanno, lets not care about mental health.

That wasn't by any chance Walter? The Walter that's always calling the Kim Wade show, was it?

How do you tell the dumped crazies from the citizens living near there?

Real men would've handled this situation back in the day. How limp wristed must every man within viewing distance be to permit such a degenerate public display?

Blaming mental health issues? Those have existed long before the advent of the insane asylum. Do you think they let grown men strut nude back then?

He would understand a group of men surrounding him with their belts prepped and ready for discipline.

Some of you simply have no sense of humor! A NEKKID MAN in public, especially doing a pop-up performance, is by very definition funnnnny. Life gets so routine and boring around here, any kook being krazee is welcome entertainment.

Conventional wisdom suggests that the reduction of funding for social welfare policies during the 1980s is the result of a conservative backlash against the welfare state. With such a backlash, it should be expected that changes in the policies toward involuntary commitment of the mentally ill reflect a generally conservative approach to social policy more generally. In this case, however, the complex of social forces that lead to less restrictive guidelines for involuntary commitment are not the result of conservative politics per se, but rather a coalition of fiscal conservatives, law and order Republicans, relatives of mentally ill patients, and the practitioners working with those patients. Combined with a sharp rise in homelessness during the 1980s, Ronald Reagan pursued a policy toward the treatment of mental illness that satisfied special interest groups and the demands of the business community, but failed to address the issue: the treatment of mental illness

Everyone blaming the defunding of insane asylums by past administrations forget that such institutions committed heinous acts such as frontal lobotomies and electrocution to render people harmless and obedient. Does anyone really honestly think that an unelected extrajudicial body should wield such power without due process?

Crazy people existed long before mental institutions and government. Stop believing that government is the solution to every problem and find solutions yourself.

A group of men could've handled this situation by warning the nude dude to put his clothes on or face some very public consequences.

I actually encountered this individual 10-15 minutes before he stripped down and started dancing. He was ranting and waving his arms but I don’t think he was violent, he was talking to me from two feet away, I just stood there calmly and tried to ignore him. He eventually walked away. It wasn’t until I was in my vehicle and leaving, I saw him dancing in the nude, right in front of the Mayflower.

4:54
“A group of men could've handled this situation by warning the nude dude to put his clothes on or face some very public consequences.”

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Yeah sure. Crazy people who scream at squirrels and strip off their clothes sure would be intimidated by a group of men. What’s the color of the sky in your world?

https://www.nytimes.com/1984/10/30/science/how-release-of-mental-patients-began.html

"HOW RELEASE OF MENTAL PATIENTS BEGAN

By RICHARD D. LYONSOCT. 30, 1984

THE policy that led to the release of most of the nation's mentally ill patients from the hospital to the community is now widely regarded as a major failure. Sweeping critiques of the policy, notably the recent report of the American Psychiatric Association, have spread the blame everywhere, faulting politicians, civil libertarian lawyers and psychiatrists.

But who, specifically, played some of the more important roles in the formation of this ill-fated policy? What motivated these influential people and what lessons are to be learned?

A detailed picture has emerged from a series of interviews and a review of public records, research reports and institutional recommendations. The picture is one of cost-conscious policy makers, who were quick to buy optimistic projections that were, in some instances, buttressed by misinformation and by a willingness to suspend skepticism.

Many of the psychiatrists involved as practitioners and policy makers in the 1950's and 1960's said in the interviews that heavy responsibility lay on a sometimes neglected aspect of the problem: the overreliance on drugs to do the work of society.

The records show that the politicians were dogged by the image and financial problems posed by the state hospitals and that the scientific and medical establishment sold Congress and the state legislatures a quick fix for a complicated problem that was bought sight unseen."....


SINCE 1984 THE UNDERFUNDING PROBLEMS HAVE GOTTEN WORSE...AS HAVE THE PROBLEMS FOR THE PATIENTS AND THOSE MEMBERS OF SOCIETY NOT LIVING BEHIND GATES AND SECURITY...

Next time drop him off at the bus stop in Madison where there is more unused capacity.

Reagan did it in the eighties. I witnessed it first hand as a route salesman in urban areas. If they made it home, most were brought to the corner store and left there to fend for themselves.

One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest for sure.

Mayflower is awesome. Elite sucked in the 90s when they wouldn’t even let you sit and chat. Enchiladas were all the rage. WTF, you can get Mexican food at a million better places.

Yeah, the rolls were good and the waitresses were hot, but I digress.

@5:41
I think you missed the point. If the nutjob doesn't immediately put his clothes back on, he is dealt with

Don't forget the VA Hospital in Jackson. Their mental health department stabilizes veterans and then dumps them off at the Gateway Mission to wait weeks for a bed in a long term program.But by gosh that expensive new garden in front of the hospital sure does look pretty.

What is it about the mentally challenged that requires them to remove their clothes in public?
Was the mental case that dropped trousers in front of the UMC also a reject from a mental institution?

It was the Carter administration that came up with the process of releasing patients vs warehousing them. This turned into the vast increase in homeless folks camping out on the streets and AR our doorsteps. Funding issues for mental health issues can be debated, discussed and rebuffed, and most any argument about "who shot John" can be found to be true.

The question is - since federal law will not allow the state to keep these people institutionlied against their will, and very often their families (if they have family, or a family that acknowledges their existence) won't take care of them - for whatever reason, good or selfish, what should the state do with them?

Besides the 9000 employees funded by the state (1/3 of the entire state workforce) the highest expenditure for pharmaceutical expenses is for psychological drugs, with four of the top five drugs prescribed being for psychotic issues (over 90% of the Medicaid drug budget.

Don't have an answer, but dumping them off at the bus station and wiping ones hands is not the answer. Just like Madison dropping off their panhandle to the south side of County Line - this is not a problem of Jackson's making. There are plenty of problems with the Capitol city, but the neighboring areas loading up and dumping their problems in downtown Jackson should be stopped.

I dance necked every night before getting in bed, and my wife ignores me. I stop, put on my Mickey Mouse pajamas, get in bed, and go to sleep. Ignoring the problem seems to work.

There's NOT a bus station in Madison. Pay attention! There IS an Amtrak lean-to in Canton, however, and another one up in Yazoo.

Carter passed policies for community based treatment. Reagan cut the funding and brought them to the bus station.

I made the comment last year that other state agencies were dropping off mental patients and prisoners at the bus station and I was called a liar. Drug abuse often causes mental illness. I don’t know what the answer is but if something isn’t done then counties from all over the state will be transporting prisoners to Jackson. Hell, we already had to take in the delinquency’s of the 9th ward after Katrina and house them in the weekly Indian owned hotels

The Republicans caused this problem starting with Reagan.

Abandoning some of the more seriously mentally ill patients in the middle of a city makes you wonder who the real crazy ones are in this situation.

One day, someone is going to get hurt or killed & the department of mental health is going to be in a bit of bind.

One naked dancing mentally ill man does not make a San Francisco equivalent homeless problem for Jackson. I agree there should be more money for mental institutions in this state and this nation. I was in San Francisco last summer and there were homeless, mentally unstable people all over the city. Just wait until you see one who is not only naked but has smeared his own feces all over himself.

Check this video out from San Francisco.
https://youtu.be/ld6qYJe4pRs

@2:12PM...It was actually the US Supreme that opened the asylum doors and turned them loose onto our streets. The Reagan Administration sued to stop it and the rest is history. Before you take uneducated and cheap shots at President Reagan, take a moment and review the facts.

FACTS:
In 1972 Geraldo Rivera did the Willowbrook School pieces for 20/20.

Willowbrook was an already notorious institution for children who were mentally ill or very below average IQ . It actually became more of a warehouse for unwanted children.

As a result, lawsuits against the School were filed and it was ruled that no one could not be institutionalized " unless they were a danger to themselves or others".


The sensationalized story which overlooked that 1) there were well run institutions for the mentally ill and substance abusers and those who can function well enough to meet their minimum needs and 2) treatment for the mentally ill and substance abusers is life long and not short termed and most often requires competent supervision.


But, the story evoked the public's emotions and anger which pushed politicians to make matters worse with the legislation they added. So, more overly simplistic "solutions" were added to exacerbate a complex problem.

Do not blame a political party or a President, blame ABC's success in turning news into " entertainment" as news shows had never been " profitable" but had been seen as " public service". Blame those who overact without bothering to understand the issues or check out the accuracy. Blame judges who don't know what they don't know and rule based only on a legal understanding without reliable or sufficient expert testimony and who never bother to study human behavior.

The bad outcome was predictable just as the bad outcomes we are seeing now that all news is " entertainment". This is what happens when profit and political expediency infect a society. No long term solution be found. We get short term, feel good laws with bad outcomes which cause emotions to be come more inflamed and misinformation information increases. It's an old, old series of human events that lead to mob induced chaos and conflict.

So look at the people who trigger your emotions without telling you all you need to know and then look in the mirror and reflect on yourself before you caste blame. If you think history is about who wins the battles in wars= and never bother to understand the conditions that allowed war to happen and the villans and heroes to gain enough " followers" ,you are the problem.

to april 22 @10:49............. so you go to ticos to get away from the panhandlers , eh? well. in that case dont ever let yourself end up back in the locker room. there you will find the worse panhandlers known to man. your esteemed mississippi legislators "working hard for you", as they try to suck every dime they can out of the stinking lobbyists .

7:50 knows history and is correct.

All these businessES need to do is put another sticker on the door that says "NO NEKKID PEOPLE ALLOWED". Same as the stickers that say "NO PROFANITY" and "NO GUNS UP IN HERE" and "EAT AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE BUT EAT ALL YOU TAKE".


Next thing you know we'll have people taking a dump on the street, like in San Francisco. And it's not Shad White's job to clean that up either.

Maybe the Mural project will fix Jackson.

Hence the name "willie."

Some of us are old enough to remember the yellow T-shirts featuring a Thorazine tablet and the legend "Free the Whitfield 3,000." They were very hip and "woke" in the late 70's, I believe. How's that working out?

7:50 and 10:01 the Reagan Administration weren't plantiffs they brought the suit.

Isn't Ironic that Reagan would need mental health care.

9:35 REALLY knows history and is REALLY correct.

You can't hitch-hike off the interstate into Madison. Can't carry a cardboard sign out in front of Wal-Mart. Won't walk the streets wearing a beard and a back-pack. And you damned sure won't walk up to a car and knock on the window.

What the hell do you think would happen if you walked around with your pecker flapping in the wind? And if you do, it damned sure better be a pleasing sandstone beige, and when fully erect, better be bearing a tattoo of a spire or cupola.

My husband and I were back in Jackson for the weekend and we live in New Orleans. We don't even have this kind of excitement here! I am sad that mental health is last on the list for people that really need it. What wasn't mentioned is that I believe it was the same man who had put his clothes on by now stormed the Parlor Market and started yelling and grabbing glasses and making a scene. We were thankful no guns were drawn, but prior to this the police were out front writing parking tickets! If they are trying to revitalize downtown why in the world would they be handing out parking tickets! They should provide free parking and security escorts for businesses.
I will say downtown Jackson looked very clean. We were amazed. They need security and more mental health for these folks that need help. Get it together "Big J".

A few weeks ago, a fire truck on a call couldnt get through at night because of the cars illegally parked in the yellow lane. JPD been cracking down. Public Safety issue.

Interesting that Heraldo Rivera is mentioned in this segment on mental health. Well, not interesting....but fitting.

And to the lady visitor from New Orleans; we could have a mental health facility on every corner in Jackson and that would not address the court decision that people cannot be incarcerated there against their will for over 48 hours. There is a rather large mental health complex on Highway 80 out near I220. I suspect the hundred cars there belong to PERS participants.

What a waste of tax payer money! They should have given him a ticket out of state.

The Mayflower, Parlor Market and The Elite don't deserve to be punished because of the mental facilities actions. Those saying they are going to "drop" these local businesses are as much the problem as the people dropping these patients off at the bus stop. And no, you don't have to limit yourself to Table 100 or Tico's because going downtown is a "gauntlet of mentally ill and panhandlers". It's not. If you're that much of a pansy, bring a concealed weapon. You just want to insulate yourself in a Madison/Rankin bubble where the only diversity you encounter is what color your neighbor's leased BMW is and this is just another pathetic excuse. Grow a pair and stand up for your capital city you white flight Tucker Carlson pansies.