About a week ago, The Chicago Tribune "noticed" that the Uptown/Argyle/Edgewater neighborhoods had the highest concentration of nursing homes dedicated to treating the mentally ill right here, literally around the corner from where I live. Generally an okay neighborhood due to the proximity to live music venues at Lawrence and Broadway, the incredible food in the Argyle corridor, and the "not as expensive as Andersonville" nature of living here; like a lot of people, I had no idea the depth of the problems over at Somerset Place.
We tolerated the madness over at "CrazyTown" (my personal label for Somerset Place) because things generally seemed to be managed okay over there. However, with the Tribune article in my mind, and this being December 7, the day we remember Pearl Harbor; I began to wonder whether there were deeper questions that needed to be asked about Somerset Place, Bryn Mawr Care, and the 9 other residential care facilities in our neighborhood.
The question that most dominated my consciousness was "how many vets have ended up in one of these places?" The second was "is this level of violence and lack of real treatment acceptable for anyone, let alone our vets?"
Vets (and Victims) Deserve Better
You can't miss the guys in our neighborhood who come from one of these facilities or out of the shelters. Many of them suffer with multiple issues...alcoholism, drug addiction, P.T.S.D., hunger, homelessness. Often you hear them talking with their buddies or fighting on the street over their "part of the turf" in the streets...or at least what they can hang on to in between shelters and being moved from facility to facility.
Sometimes you hear them talking about their military experience...and that's when it really gets scary here. They sometimes can get really "out there" and are clearly not "here and now."
Because the element of their military experience is at issue, you would think that the V.A. would make an effort to take care of these folks that need quality psychiatric and physical care. Unfortunately it seems that even under our re-invigorated V.A. system, these guys are the forgotten, and the V.A. may not even know they are up here. It makes you want to call Tammy Duckworth on the phone and tell her to get a battalion of medical professionals up here for some direct intervention. That is, if that were possible.
Unfortunately, many of the medical professionals that should be monitoring these facilities for vets and in general have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan under the current wars. Many of the psychiatric specialists are tasked with taking care of the current generation of P.T.S.D.-inflicted soldiers, let alone the ones from the "forgotten wars" of Iraq I, Vietnam, or Korea. It makes you wonder, what will happen to that current crop of warriors, if they continue to be passed through such a taxed system, and then on to the bottom-line...Somerset Place and its' sister facilities.
We Can't Let That Happen
In order to solve the problems in Uptown and Edgewater, one of the key things that must be dealt with here is obviously these facilities, and the sheer number of violently ill patients they house. Just by dealing with a portion of these folks...like the portion that should be cared for by the V.A., could have a massive effect on the overall number and nature of the incidents in the 11 care facilities. Just by enhancing the oversight by the V.A. on the existing system, using the same metrics that guide the overhaul of the V.A. as a whole, it could have a radical effect on the way patients are treated, cared for, and perhaps even rehabilitated.
This also could prevent a whole new generation of young vets from slipping through the cracks into these facilities, by identifying the risk factors and sharpening intervention efforts before they get to them. In other words, we could do what the covenant our country says is "the right thing to do" by our vets, and insure they are properly cared for, in a way our Vietnam vets were not--a key reason many of these vets end up here in the first place.
Then, addressing the rest of the violently ill here, we need to remember that some of them cannot be rehabilitated, and some of them may even be criminally insane persons who should be in state psychiatric lockups instead of in residential facilities. Again, oversight here is key, and that means manpower. Manpower is jobs, and jobs are a good thing. Why not use some of the leftover stimulus funds for training new psychiatric counselors, nurses, treatment specialists, and criminal psychologists; so as to take an entirely new look into these facilities in a deep, comprehensive manner?
These new hires could be trained and deployed under a federal jobs program, aimed at addressing some of the most pressing trends in our society, the lack of treatment of the persons in these facilities, and giving these folks something better to do than to just hang out on the street corner in between courses of medication.
Steps To Solving The Problems Are Not Easy, but They Are Clear
I'm not saying that I have all the answers to these problems. Far from it. However, it does seem to me that people who live in this neighborhood have a responsibility to our neighborhood to try to be a part of the solution.
1) Get Involved. We need to pressure our public and private leaders to take notice of the problems at Somerset Place, Bryn Mawr Care, and the other facilities in our neighborhood in a meaningful way.
2) Make Them Accountable. When public officials say "no one cares about this in my area," we need to make sure they know that we do, and that we're paying attention. If they don't address it, we'll vote for someone who does.
3) Call on the V.A. and other Feds to do their part. We should go before the cameras, on talk radio, online, and in the news; calling for the feds to get involved. After all, many of the problems Uptown/Argyle and Edgewater were created by the failed social policies of the Reagan, Bush, and Bush II Administrations...you know 'em...the ones that said "its not our problem, and its to expensive." Sorry, that's not good enough. We can do better.
4) Don't give up and leave. If we leave and leave the problem here, not only are we giving up and showing we don't care enough (i.e. we're too lazy to care), but that we are willing to sacrifice our property values and the ownership of our streets. We are showing that we will allow the thugs, nuts, and victimization to rule. We can't let that happen. This is the hard part, and we need to buck up and stay put...and help ourselves by taking our neighborhood back.
