Handcuffed To Pole

My entry has to do with the 17 year old mentally challenged young man who was found this week handcuffed to a pole in his parent’s basement.  In the article, the boy is quoted as claiming he’d been handcuffed in the basement for months and had food rationed to him daily.  Apparently the parents locked him in the basement at first for stealing food, and once he figured out how to get out of the basement began stealing food again, thus (of course) leading the parents to handcuff him to the basement pole.  The article fails to state if the parents were arrested on site for having their son handcuffed to the pole.

The correlation I draw between this situation in this article and public policy and local politics is this:  are we really doing enough to serve those affected by poor mental health and mental disabilities?  Think about all the handicapped parking spots you see, think about all the building codes that require ramps for the physically impaired.  Now think about what resources are available for those who are mentally handicapped or have poor mental health, and on top of that, think about what resources are available to those parents, caregivers, or family members of those suffering from poor mental health?

I don’t believe that the state or the city does enough for these people.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m not advocating chaining the mentally handicapped to a basement poll, but if you’re a parent of a 17 year old mentally challenged kid, and you feel he’s out of control and are worried he may be a harm to the community, who do you go to?  Who can help?  I think about all the handicapped parking spaces designated for those with physical disabilities…I don’t think we put forth even 1/10th the resources to mentally challenged and handicapped people as we do those with physical disabilities.