My friend Julio spent many years in Illinois' so-called "forensic mental health" system. He killed somebody and then convinced a judge to send him to a so-called "hospital" instead of prison. So be it. A couple years ago, we managed to get him a conditional release, and now he's living in the community, working every day, not taking any drugs. So far, he's a success story for whoever wants it.
The EMHC "treatment" team gets to imagine that they cured him of the mental illness that caused him to kill somebody (no mean trick). The court that committed him and then released him gets to say it had an accurate sense of justice for not just locking him up for life. I get to say I was right for advocating for his release even though he refused to buy into the required psychiatric state religion. His kids get to have a dad again after a long time. Our capitalist society gets one more taxpayer back on the rolls. Julio is an all-round, pretty good boy.
But he needs to be finally discharged. The plantation system keeps trying, as it always will, to reel him back down to their fields to pick their cotton. He's not much better than a fugitive slave as long as there are conditions on his freedom. He has to live where somebody tells him to live, he has to show up for "meetings" that are part of somebody else's program, and the people running the "meetings" don't care if he thinks he's working a paying job in the real world, because they figure they still own him.
"You had work until 9:00, Julio? So what? I told you to come to the 8:00 meeting!" This was the ignorant harangue from a very young, self-important, new employee named Mario at the group home recently. It actually became an assault and battery, when Julio's chest was aggressively poked by Mario's hard finger, and Mario's angry voice was raised, for several other staff to witness. There could be a legitimate criminal charge or civil claim, which those who were heard laughing about the incident later may know. (Did they laugh because they thought Mario was an idiot for losing it and putting himself in potential trouble; or were they just making fun of the poor submissive slave?)
The 8:00 "meeting" that Mario was so strict and self-important about may have been group counseling, or a substance abuse session, which in theory is mandated by the conditions of Julio's release from EMHC. But anybody with decent intent and a modicum of sense knows that a real, honest job is more therapeutic than all the mental health nonsense any bunch of middling, would-be "slave-overseers-cum-mental-health-professionals" can throw around at night when everybody is tired and short tempered.
Julio is well into middle age. He did his years of time. He learned how to be tolerant and non-aggressive even when idiots like Mario are being idiots. He takes no psych "medications" that the taxpayers of Illinois have to pay for. Nobody notices any "mental illness" in him. He's a productive citizen, a working man. Give him credit for that.
C'mom guys, don't harass him! He's the kind of "mental patient" we all want, the kind we can brag about to legitimize expensive salaries and cumbersome bureaucracies.
And he's very rare, in fact maybe a fable.
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