Mental Health

[taxxcpa]

Ralph and Edna were both patients in a mental hospital. One day while they were walking past the hospital swimming pool, Ralph suddenly jumped into the deep end.

He sank to the bottom of the pool and stayed there.

Edna promptly jumped in to save him. She swam to the bottom and pulled him out. When the Head Nurse Director became aware of Edna's heroic act she immediately ordered her to be discharged from the hospital, as she now considered her to be mentally stable.

When she went to tell Edna the news she said, 'Edna, I have good news and bad news. The good news is you're being discharged, since you were able to rationally respond to a crisis by jumping in and saving the life of the person you love... I have concluded that your act displays sound mindedness.

The bad news is, Ralph hung himself in the bathroom with his bathrobe belt right after you saved him. I am so sorry, but he's dead.'

Edna replied, 'He didn't hang himself, I put him there to dry.

How soon can I go home?'

[Mr. Pencil]

Not exactly laugh of the day--trying to make a joke about a mental patient murdering someone.

I am personally grateful for the Affordable Care Act. It requires insurance companies to bring mental health treatment up to parity with other illness. It guarantees new coverage for disabled unfortunates who are trying to become productive again. And it has already prevented unmeasurable tragedy by allowing parents to maintain insurance for their children from 18 to 26, the most common age for the onset of mental illness.

And I am especially glad that the job has been given to IRS. For all its problems, IRS has remained by far the most consistent and reliable federal agency. And fiscally sound, too.

[Jack from Ohio]

And I am especially glad that the job has been given to IRS. For all its problems, IRS has remained by far the most consistent and reliable federal agency. And fiscally sound, too.

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You must be talking about a different IRS than I have dealt with for 14 years. :dunno:

[Terry D EA]

Ditto jack

[kcjenkins]

It was a JOKE. The poster was not trying to "make fun of the mentally ill". Please don't turn it into a political argument. We have a separate forum for political posts.

[Jack from Ohio]

The original joke is more about the absolutely atrocious condition of mental health diagnosis and treatment. Am I the only one that sees that?

Roses are Red,

Violets are Blue;

I'm a schizophrenic,

And I am too.

BTW, sanity is overrated!!

[Mr. Pencil]

It was a JOKE. The poster was not trying to "make fun of the mentally ill". Please don't turn it into a political argument. We have a separate forum for political posts.

Perhaps I should have appealed to the moderators, because I was personally offended and hurt by the insensitive treatment of disability. In my post, I tried to sidetrack it into non-negative comments about issues that, regardless of political opinion, we as tax professionals are required by law to deal with.

[kcjenkins]

Well, I try not to take 'jokes' personally. I'm old, overweight, short, and female, and was even blonde as a child, so if I wanted to, I could be 'offended' at about a third of the jokes in the world. But unless it's directed specifically at a real person, a joke is just a way of dealing with life by finding humor in everyday events. It's much healthier to laugh than to look for things to be offended by. One of the reasons we encourage the "Laugh" posts here is because laughing is a way to help us get through hard and painful times in our lives. All of us have them, but laughing does help. If a particular 'joke' does not seem funny to you, please just skip on by it.

[Jack from Ohio]

Perhaps I should have appealed to the moderators, because I was personally offended and hurt by the insensitive treatment of disability. In my post, I tried to sidetrack it into non-negative comments about issues that, regardless of political opinion, we as tax professionals are required by law to deal with.

Please contact the Admins about your concerns. I am totally serious about this. KCJenkins is the head moderator. Mention to him that I suggested you make the contact.

[SaraEA]

Anyone who has lived with mental illness in themselves or in their family could not take a lighthearted approach to such "jokes." Do you think a parent of a teen who committed suicide would get a big laugh out of that joke? Or the mother of the Navy yard shooter who tearfully apologized and sympathized with the victims of her son's actions?

Politics aside, our nation's policymakers have time and again legislated "parity" in mental health care (treating it the same as any other medical condition), but they never put any teeth into it. Lots of folks who pay nothing out of pocket for visits to their internist or pediatrician and $10 for prescriptions forego mental health treatment because it costs $225 for a 50-minute hour with a therapist and the meds are over $800 a month, out of pocket. Insurance might pay for three or four visits, but even if you have schizophrenia or bipolar disorder you better be cured by then. The ACA will at last put an end to this denial of treatment.

The saddest part of the Navy yard story is that the killer was actively seeking treatment and had recently been seen by psychiatrists. Years ago it became PC that it wasn't nice to institutionalize anyone, and I read today that our nation now has 5% of the beds in mental health facilities that it had 50 years ago when the deinstitutionalization movement began. If the killer had in any way threatened to harm himself or others, he could have been put into a mental health facility. He apparently did not do that, so there is no way the doctors could have given him the inpatient treatment that would have kept everyone safe.

Jokes about Catholics and Jews and Irish and Asians, and tax preparers for that matter, can be tasteful and fun. Jokes about someone's anguish and pain are just mean.

[Catherine]

I posted an article that discusses the issue you raised about it being "not PC to institutionalize" those who really need it. It's on a thread in the Political forum; you can search on my posts.

Heinlein's character Valentine Michael Smith, in "Stranger In A Strange Land," points out that *everything* funny contains something that is inherently wrong, bad, or painful -- and that laughter is humanity's way of dealing with all the "wrongness" in life. So "jokes about someone's anguish and pain" are, frankly, what humor is all about. There were certainly jokes I heard tell/were told specifically to hurt or offend me, years ago, that were very painful to me at the time -- and now, with the pain more distant, I see the funny in them. We know people with schizophrenia ("bipolar" they call it today); the bipolar newsgroups have some incredibly pointed and VERY funny interchanges, all coming from places of pain.

[Kea]

Minor correction: Bi-polar is the "new" name for manic depression, not schizophrenia. I know this because my mother was bipolar.

(Unless they changed the nomenclature again?)

[Eric]

Not exactly laugh of the day--trying to make a joke about a mental patient murdering someone.

I am personally grateful for the Affordable Care Act...

Well that changed directions quickly. A current member of the forum must have signed up for a new account. I think I know who it is, but I'm not telling.

In my post, I tried to sidetrack it into non-negative comments about issues that, regardless of political opinion, we as tax professionals are required by law to deal with.

[Lion EA]

Wow! I need a few laughs in this busy time leading up to 15 October, while my computer monitors are failing, my son is suffering from severe anger issues, my ex is telling me to fix it as I'm the mother (my "kid" is 32 years old and married), and we're working on our church's main time-consuming fundraiser. Even the sick jokes bring me up for air and out of my panic.

However, I laughed at that joke for an entirely different reason, didn't laugh at those that had been diagnosed as mentally ill. I laughed at the doctors that thought they'd made an accurate diagnosis based on one event in the woman's life! But, were proved wrong. Doctors are not God. Luckily they were proved wrong before the patient could be released.

Now, I've offended doctors. Hopefully, no doctor is reading a tax board. But some of you have doctors in your families, so I do apologize. I remember going through a sick joke phase as a child, so it is easy to revert to that as a release valve in times of stress.

[Jack from Ohio]

... I laughed at that joke for an entirely different reason, didn't laugh at those that had been diagnosed as mentally ill. I laughed at the doctors that thought they'd made an accurate diagnosis based on one event in the woman's life! But, were proved wrong. Doctors are not God. Luckily they were proved wrong before the patient could be released.

Now, I've offended doctors. Hopefully, no doctor is reading a tax board. But some of you have doctors in your families, so I do apologize. I remember going through a sick joke phase as a child, so it is easy to revert to that as a release valve in times of stress.

Ditto!!!!!

[Jack from Ohio]

...I laughed at the doctors that thought they'd made an accurate diagnosis based on one event in the woman's life! But, were proved wrong.

Replace the word doctors with Liberal politicians and voters, and you have the same condition!!!

[jklcpa]

Jack,

I said I am not easily offended. I saw the "joke" and let it stand even though it was personally not fun for me to see. I try to put personal feelings aside and be fair. What speaks more loudly to me is that after someone said that he was offended by the joke, you chose to further offend by posting a poem and your quip "sanity is overrated!!"

[Eric]

locked.

this thread has expired, and is starting to stink.