RUSH: We are gonna start somewhere in Florida with Patrice. Patrice, thank you for calling and waiting. Great to have out EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. I was gonna comment on a couple things that I’ve heard lately. I am a psychiatrist. I do work in Florida. I worked with chronically mentally ill patients for over 20 years. Although I do want to say that, you know, the majority of patients who have severe psychiatric illness are not violent. What I have found in my work, clinically, is it is very difficult to get somebody committed to a state hospital because there are patient rights.
As a psychiatrist, you will have patients that may be placed on a 72-hour hold which is a BA-52. They may have done something proceeding their coming into the hospital which could be very violent. They could have threatened to kill their parents; they could have destroyed property; they could have assaulted others. They may be picked up by police, taken to jail, and then they come to the mental health unit.
And what happens is, over time — 72 hours — two of us psychiatrists will evaluate them. Now, let’s say we do feel that they’re a danger to others. Then we go to court, and they’re placed on what is called the BA-32. And it can take up to four weeks to get these patients in front of a judge. But oftentimes what happens is in that four-week period of time, if you have a patient that is a psychiatric patient that does have a psychiatrist illness or have a drug-induced psychosis, which we often see…
In the inpatient unit you cannot treat them unless they’re an imminent danger to themselves or others. So I have patients that are psychotic, they’re agitated, they’re irritable. I can’t force them to take medication. I have to wait until they actually do something or are threatening or behave in such a way that we can involuntarily medicate them, and then the public defender can continue these cases for up to four weeks. So what happens is when you go to court —
RUSH: Are you saying that mental illness has become a right that people have? You have a right to be mentally ill? My next question is: Even if these obstacles that you’ve described weren’t in your way, and even if you could commit people who you thought needed to be, where would you put them?
CALLER: Again, a couple of issues. They closed down G. Pierce Wood’s, which is a state facility in Florida. So many severely psychiatrically ill patients were placed on the street. They went into group homes. They went into society.
RUSH: Isn’t that how the homeless became homeless? They used to be institutionalized and a bunch of liberals came along and said, “They have rights! You can’t keep them there”?
CALLER: About a third, they say, of homeless patients are mentally ill. But they’re not necessarily violent. What I’m trying to say is I can tell you that in my experience you can have a patient who’s violent, you can have a patient who is mentally ill — and I don’t know the thought processes of this person who did this terrible thing. I’m saying it’s very difficult to not only get ’em committed, because, you’re right, there’s very few mental health resources. There’s not a hospital to put ’em in, and you can’t make them take medication. And they will be discharged from the hospital. Even as a psychiatrist, if you say, “I’m concerned. I think this person is a danger to others.” The public defender will say, “But they’ve been on your unit for how many weeks? Have they hurt anybody?” And we can tell them, “Yes, but they’re on medication,” but this patient is telling me they’re not gonna take it when they leave.
RUSH: Well, you’re making it sound like there’s nothing we can do.
CALLER: I’m telling you that there is, in many instances, as a psychiatrist, nothing that I’m able to do in the system to get treatment for some of these patients who I feel need treatment, but you can’t force them to get treatment. You can’t. There’s laws that protect them. And I understand that, because in the past, you know, I know there was a lot of abuse of patients that were chronically mentally ill, and I don’t know what this gentleman, what was going on with his head. But I’m saying, from a reality standpoint, it’s very difficult.
RUSH: You know, you ought to read something. I mentioned this in the first hour. We’ll link to it at RushLimbaugh.com if you want to find it the easy way, but you can also find it at Gawker.com. It’s a piece by a woman named Liza Long, “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother.” In fact, I might read a couple excerpts of this. But it is written by a woman who has a disturbed child who threatens to kill her. He’s 13, threatens to kill himself. She says, look, this kid is going to do what Adam Lanza did if something isn’t done. She describes the problems of getting him committed to a hospital, what happens when she tells him that that’s what’s gonna happen, he throws a fit. She fears for her own safety. I think you’d be fascinated by it. I think everybody would, actually.
CALLER: Well, what I’m saying is you hear people talk, “Well, there needs to be early intervention. These people need to be identified.” And, again, even if there is intervention, and even if they are identified, and even if they’re in the system, you can’t force them to get treatment when they leave. You can’t force them to take medication when they leave. You don’t have that authority.
RUSH: All right. If you had the authority what would you recommend?
CALLER: In what instance? In a patient who has —
RUSH: Yeah, the situation that you’ve described.
CALLER: Well, ideally there’s a couple of things. If a patient has a severe psychiatric illness, and I’m saying these patients don’t often react violently, but let’s say you do have a patient who has a history of being violent off his medication, who has a history of assaulting family off of medication who you feel that you can get stabilized and get treated and then when they leave the hospital they refuse to take the medication. I mean, in an ideal world, in a world that you want to protect others, you know, wouldn’t it be ideal if the court could order them they have to go every two weeks or every four weeks to get their shot because you know if they don’t they’re gonna be a danger to others. But that’s not how the system is because unless they’re imminently a danger to themselves or others, imminently —
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: — hours away, you cannot commit them.
RUSH: You know what would happen, if you prevailed, if you were able to deal with patients that you properly diagnosed in the way in which you’ve described, what would happen is some Hollywood producer would come along, hear about it, and make a movie about how one of these people so treated actually came up with the cure for cancer, but nobody was willing to listen because they were insane and that would put pressure on society not to put these people away. It’s what we’ve done with the homeless. Every Christmas season, you have some leftist come along and say, “The homeless are the modern day equivalents of Mary and Joseph. They are wandering around and there’s no room at the inn.” They try to make this connection. It’s a vicious circle. I don’t envy you your job. It sounds like a lot of frustration. And it sounds like what we need is lunatic control, and we don’t have any.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Here’s Bob, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Bob, welcome. I’m glad you waited. Hi.
CALLER: Hey, greetings, Rush. Rush, you know, we associate killing with hate all the time. But what if these killings were motivated by love? In other words, mercy killings? The media has pounded us for months, and increasingly so in the last several weeks, with this apocalyptic scenario of the world ending by the Mayan calendar. Complete with pictures of the world completely crumbling apart, volcanoes. I mean, it’s graphically terrible. What if this guy was suffering from paranoia, and even if his mom was a Prepper, this is a scenario that you could not survive?
RUSH: Um… Okay. So the conclusion to what you’re saying is that this guy was trying to kill people to spare them the end of the world?
CALLER: Exactly. And the media was, as far as I’m concerned, the one that is exploiting this. I mean, you can’t turn on the TV or the radio without hearing some kind of program on this coming the 21st.
RUSH: Well, I don’t know about that. I have the TV on a lot. Well, actually, I don’t watch a lot of news. You may be right. I don’t see a lot about the Mayan stuff myself, but then again, if I ever did, I’d just tune it out.
CALLER: See, I have. It’s just random listening and random looking, just on general stations and not so much on, you know, cable networks.
RUSH: What kind of people are talking about this? You haven’t heard it on this program.
CALLER: No! No, but I’ve heard it on other news broadcasts.
RUSH: I mean, the greatest Mayan temple I know is over in Atlantis. It’s a great water slide out there. Kids are on it all the time.
CALLER: Well, according to the Mayans, the calendar ends this Friday and the world is supposed to end.
RUSH: This Friday?
CALLER: Well, the 21st, exactly.
RUSH: Everywhere?
CALLER: Everywhere. The planet.
RUSH: Everywhere.
CALLER: The planet is history.
RUSH: So if I take off Friday and I’m in the air, would I be saved, just have nowhere to land?
CALLER: Well, that would be the only problem. You wouldn’t have a place to land and unless the lightning bolts would come down and hit you. At that point, I can’t give you any guarantees.
RUSH: I’ll tell you something. I did wonder if fear of economic collapse might have played a role in this. Maybe with the kid, but his mother clearly was a Prepper. His mother was hoarding things — ammo, food. His mother believed in this last days. I don’t know specifically about the Mayan thing this Friday, but she clearly believed that we didn’t have a whole lot of time left, and so she was preparing. She was a survivalist.
I think she thought she could survive it. She was hoarding things that she thought would be necessary, and she was teaching the kids how to use the guns. She took this kid with her to target practice. Again, I don’t know if that’s true. I’m sorry, folks. I’m repeating things that could very well just be not true. It’s in the media. I don’t know. I have to catch myself, ’cause every… (interruption)
Well, that’s right.
It was the British press, so it may have some factual basis. Let’s play it out. If Adam Lanza’s mother was stockpiling weapons because she was convinced the economy was going to collapse, and if her son was mentality disabled and fearing a tax increase… (interruption) Well, I’m just bouncing off what the White House press secretary said. If Adam Lanza is listening to his mother and is convinced the economy is gonna collapse and the burden on his family is gonna go up tax-wise because of the Republicans…
You know what the biggest killer of innocent people ever devised in the world is? The biggest killer of innocent people ever devised is poverty, which can be brought about by communism/socialism. Poverty. Now, do we have people among us advocating policies which perpetuate and create even more poverty? We do, don’t we? Yes, we do. Poverty is a lethal weapon, and we have policies in place to expand it right now.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Kathleen, Georgia, and Lisa. It’s great to have you on the EIB Network. Hello.
CALLER: Hi, Rush. How you doing?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: Good. I was wondering, what I don’t understand about all this with the shooting is, why is it so easy for people to believe that some people are pure good but they can’t believe that some people are just evil, hard-wired that way? I mean, they accept that Mother Teresa is good and caring, but they can’t accept a good like this Lanza kid is hard-wired different, hard-wired evil to where a video game doesn’t influence him, a movie doesn’t influence him. You know, it’s just the way he is. He has no empathy, no respect for life or other people. So he can go in and shoot babies and, you know, it’s not wrong to him. That’s just the way they are. It doesn’t make any sense to me.
RUSH: Well, you ask a good question. “How come people can’t accept that?” You have a theory?
CALLER: I really don’t understand it. That’s why, I’m like, do you have an opinion? And how long can you raise these kids with, “You’re good. Nobody’s better than you. Everybody is equal. This is wrong, that is wrong, this is good, that’s not,” and to have no respect?
RUSH: Now, you’ve swerved into something here: The self-esteem movement.
CALLER: Oh, yeah! And it’s like these kids today are selfish, narcissistic.
RUSH: You got some rotten-to-the-core kid, “Johnny, you’re so wonderful. You are rotten, but it’s because they made you that way.”
CALLER: Right, right.
RUSH: “Johnny, you’re special. Johnny, you’re just the best,” while Johnny’s killing ants, spiders and animals.
CALLER: Right. And you can’t raise your hand. If your children do something wrong and you discipline them, then you’re wrong. You can’t do that anymore, you know? You’ve done something in raising your children to make them that way, so it’s your fault. You know, not that your kid wants to go out and say —
RUSH: Well, it’s not just that. It’s that you have no right to discipline your kid because you’re not perfect. So who are you to tell the kid what’s right or wrong?
CALLER: That’s right. That’s right. And the schools know better than you? For your own children?
RUSH: But that still doesn’t answer the question. It’s a great question. Why don’t people…? I mean, people will easily accept — Right? — Mother Teresa as the essence of good.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: Why can’t we accept that some people epitomize evil?
CALLER: They won’t accept that. They have to look for something else. The first thing is, “Is he a right-wing extremist? Is he a member of the Tea Party?” Okay, if it’s not that, then it’s the video game, it’s the movies, or it’s the way you raised them.
RUSH: Again, you’ve swerved into it. They do accept that certain people are evil.
CALLER: If they’re on our side?
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: Yeah!
RUSH: The Tea Party is evil.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: They’re like Nazis. George Bush was Hitler.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: They do believe that certain people are evil, and it is those people they blame for all of the troubles in society.
CALLER: But they don’t believe that they’re evil in a way that they feel that people like Mother Teresa are good. You see what I’m saying? They’re evil because we have made them evil.
RUSH: Halliburton’s evil. Dick Cheney is evil. Intellectually, I still don’t understand that. Dick Cheney, to the left, is Darth Vader.
CALLER: Oh, yes! Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: I mean, he embodies evil.
CALLER: Mmm-hmm.
RUSH: He is the evil emperor and Darth Vader combined into one.
CALLER: George Bush was Satan.
RUSH: Yep.
CALLER: Yes. Was that because of his parents? No. People are just… Some people are different. Some people are hard-wired different.
RUSH: Well, now, but wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait. The people we’re talking about are not evil. Cheney’s not evil. Halliburton’s not evil. George Bush isn’t Satan. So they’re wrong about it. But I still like your question.
CALLER: You’ll never convince them of that, though. They will take a person that is evil, a person like this kid that shot these babies, and —
RUSH: He’s not! No, no. He’s not evil to them.
CALLER: That’s what I’m saying. But to me he is. To me he’s evil.
RUSH: No, he’s a victim of something.
CALLER: To me, there is an evil on this earth.
RUSH: To them, he’s a victim of something.
CALLER: Yes.
RUSH: Society, a victim of our gun culture, a victim of the NRA, a victim of Grover Norquist.
CALLER: Yes. Down here in the South, you don’t hear a lot about this kind of stuff because they raise their kids here. Guns are everywhere.
RUSH: By the way, Christopher Hitchens thought Mother Teresa was evil.
CALLER: (groans)
RUSH: There are leftists who thought she was plenty evil, ’cause they thought she was a fraud. A, she believed in God.
CALLER: Right.
RUSH: That makes you evil in some circles.
CALLER: Right. That’s your number one indicator.
RUSH: But the people you’re talking about, you want to know: Why do liberals look at certain things that are clearly criminal or evil and not see it?
CALLER: I don’t understand it.
RUSH: Because they think they have the recipe to fix it.
CALLER: Oh, of course.
RUSH: They think —
CALLER: What is it? Everything on TV so far, they’re desperately seeking something to tie this kid to so they can blame something.
RUSH: Exactly.
CALLER: So they can blame the NRA. So they can blame someone.
RUSH: Right. So as to advance a political agenda.
CALLER: Correct.
RUSH: Their political agenda is government control, and more of it, and they think that’s the solution to this. If they were just in total control of freedom and people and so forth, they could prevent this, because they could then mandatory make their policies apply to everybody. This kid would have been found out earlier. We woulda gotten to him. He’d have been changed. He’d have been perfected. Yeah, that’s the thought process. It’s a great question. Look, I have to run, Lisa, but I’m glad you called.
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